


A Disappearance in Zadash

by Beleriandings



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Campaign 1 spoilers abound, Gen, Kidnapping, Molly and Caduceus are both there because I love them, Mystery, Nott the Best Detective Agency, background Perc'ahlia cameos!!!, headcanoning wildly, set in some vague future timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 06:03:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16655599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: When a group of siblings from a far off land come to them for help in solving a kidnapping, the Nott the Best Detective Agency is faced with a case that is much closer to home than they bargained for.





	1. A Consultation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our brave detectives make the acquaintance of some new clients, come from a far off land…

“Well?” said Nott. She leaned forward over the desk they had hastily set up in the inn room, her chin in her hands. Jester, seated on the edge of the desk with her legs crossed, sketchbook in hand ready to make notes, raised an eyebrow in a way that she hoped conveyed the fact that she meant business. “What can we help you with? No matter how mind-bending the crime, no matter how tricky the perpetrators, we can solve it!”

Their clients seemed disappointingly unaffected by this display of detective-esque mannerisms, Jester thought, so she resorted to staring at the three people who had contracted their services, trying to take in every detail so that she could make some deduction or other. That might impress them, at least. 

The first thing she noticed was that they were _young_ ; younger than she had assumed, from the elegant cursive handwriting on the finely-sealed letter that had been delivered to them that morning, announcing that their services were required in solving a crime, payment open to negotiation. Younger, too, than the rather supercilious tone of the letter had implied, and the bearing of the woman who stood in the center, apparently the de-facto leader of the three. She couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen, Jester thought, barely more than a girl. Beside her stood her two even younger girls, who looked around fifteen.

They had the look of sisters about them, with the same rather aquiline noses and sharp chins, as well as the slight points to their ears that spoke of elven blood somewhere in the family. They all looked rather pale for the region, almost as pale as Caleb; perhaps they were from the north, Jester thought, congratulating herself on a solid piece of detective work already.

The eldest girl had octagonal glasses, and her dark hair was neatly pinned up and out of her face. Her high-collared violet dress was simple in design, but elegant and looked expensive. Her movements were graceful and precise, the air of refinement she carried with her only spoiled a little by how nervous she looked right now. Well, people had the right to look nervous if they had a problem bad enough to hire a detective to investigate, she reasoned, so that all made sense. The other thing Jester noticed about their eldest client was the tool belt around her waist, a little string of leather pouches slung over one shoulder, a leather satchel over the other. Something sparked in Jester’s mind at the sight of that bag; she got the sense that there was some magic about it. She would ask Caleb later, she thought, turning her attention to the other two sisters.

They were twins, with identical features save for their strange eyes; each had one brown eye and one of a bright, unnatural blue, on opposite sides. As similar as their faces were though, they were dressed completely differently from each other: one wore drab hunting leathers, a rather shapeless hat, and a brownish-green greatcoat over all, the pockets bulging with...something. The other girl wore some sort of scale mail armour under her pale grey cloak with a device on it that Jester didn’t recognise, like a shining sun, and a longsword hung at her belt. Her hair was shaved at the sides, the top worn long and braided into a long plait that hung down her back, where her sister’s was cut to jaw length, hanging over her face. The two of them had one thing in common though; both twins had bright white streaks in their dark hair, the armoured girl’s at the forehead and woven back into her braid, her twin’s at the temples on either side.

Their different hair was interesting for siblings, Jester thought. But then again, maybe some humans were like kittens. Maybe you got black-haired ones and white-haired ones and patchy ones in the same litter. She would have to ask Beau or Caleb for confirmation of this theory later.

She was just wondering if the freckles on Caleb’s face made him technically a tabby human, when the eldest of the three spoke. “Yes. Good day” she said. Her voice was lightly accented, though exactly what the accent was Jester couldn’t tell – something from the east, across the sea perhaps? - but her words were cut-glass clear. She stretched out a hand to shake, and when Nott didn’t react, she drew it back, frowning a little. Probably for the best, Jester thought; Nott’s illusion as a halfling wouldn’t hold up so easily to touch as to sight alone.

“My siblings and I are here regarding the matter discussed in my letter.” The girl looked around doubtfully, to where Caleb, Beau, Fjord, Yasha, Molly, and Caduceus stood in a row at the back of the room. All except Yasha, Beau, and Caduceus - disguised as a human bodyguard - were invisible. It was how they usually did these initial consultations for detective work; now that they were a little better known, they had more enemies, and the precaution had served them well several times in the past. Jester watched as their client narrowed her eyes slightly, behind her thick glasses. “I trust we may, ah, speak privately? It is a somewhat... sensitive matter.”

“They’re our security. They can be trusted” said Nott. “Anything you would say to me and my partner here, you can say in front of them. She grinned, a little too wide for the face of a halfling. “I’m Nott. This is Jester, my, um, partner in crime. Or like, the opposite of that. Solving crime. Un-crime.”

“Whatever your problem, we can solve it!” said Jester, with what she hoped was a reassuring grin. “Well. As long as it’s about a crime. If it’s like, a personal problem, then maybe we can try? But maybe you should uh, go to see someone else about that?”

The eldest girl nodded slowly, fiddling with the rim of her glasses for a moment. Her eyes lingered on Nott, then scanning the room and the windows behind the desk, as though for eavesdroppers. “Well, it is about a crime” she said, sharing one last glance with the the other two before looking up at Jester. “We’re here because our... little brother has been kidnapped. We...have money to pay, but we’re from out of town. Well, out of the country, actually. But in our home country, our family is one of some importance.”

“Ah! They want him for ransom, then?”

“It...would seem so, yes. Though I don’t know how well that would be known here…. we’re just passing through and we don’t really know much about the city of Zadash, so that’s why we need your help.” she said. She hesitated, and for the first time she looked a little sheepish. “And we also require discretion, because we...kind of promised our parents that we wouldn’t let anything happen to each other. It’s the only reason they let us come to Wildemount on our own. But our parents have many diplomatic contacts here, so if we could avoid the notice of high society, then we would thank you.”

Nott grinned. “Don’t worry! Avoiding high society is what we do best!” she said.

“It’s true” said Jester. “This one time, we were in a swamp, with dead guys, and this other time, we were pirates, and one time, I went to this big temple, and - ” she broke off, catching Beau’s glance and slight shake of his head from the corner of her eye. “Uh, what I mean is, we’ll keep it in the shadows!” she made her best scheming face, as the girl with the hat raised an eyebrow at her, exchanging a slightly doubtful look with her sister. “We’ll find your little brother, and be just as sneaky as we can manage when we do.”

“If you give us money” put in Nott.

“If you give us money” agreed Jester.

“Ah, yes.” The younger girl spoke now, taking out a coin-purse. “What are your rates?”

“For a job like this….” Nott squinted, counting on her fingers. In truth, they had never had a job like this, but these three weren’t to know that. “Two thousand gold. Sixty percent up front, and the rest on completion.”

The girl frowned, lip curling. “One thousand, and we pay thirty percent now and the rest when you find them.”

“One thousand? Are you trying to let us starve? One thousand seven hundred, and fifty percent.”

“One thousand four hundred. And you’d be helping a poor, frightened child.”

“...Sixteen hundred.”

“Meet me halfway. Fifteen hundred.”

“Fifty percent before and fifty percent when we find the kid?”

“Of course.”

“...Done.”

“Glad to hear it.”

The eldest one shook her head a little, rolling her eyes affectionately. “Mother would be proud” she said, more to her sisters than to the room. “Alright. Shall we draft a written agreement, and then we can all speak more freely?”

“Yes!” said Jester, glad to have a chance to write something down. She took out a sheaf of paper from the desk, contemplating the blank page. “I didn’t know your name, so if you’ll just write it on here when you sign...”

“Ah… you may call me...C.”

“Sea?” Nott squinted up at her. “Like, uh, the ocean, or…?”

“No, the letter. I am afraid, for reasons of discretion you understand that I cannot give more than an initial until we have a contract. So, if you can take it on trust - ”

“Excuse me.”

Caduceus smiled gently, voice placid as he interrupted her.

“Speaking of taking things on trust. Yasha?” he asked. “Just a precaution, but please, could you use that sword of yours to dispel some sort of... illusion…? Just...” he pointed upwards, into the corner of the room, “...there?”

Jester did not miss the way that the three sisters all stiffened at the words; the eldest girl hid it better, her eyes widening almost imperceptibly, fingers going reflexively to one of the little bags at her belt. The twins exchanged a glance.

“I don’t think that’s - ”

But then, several things happened at once. First, Yasha raised the sword and reached forward, touching the very tip to... something that was clearly solid but invisible, about a foot below the ceiling beams. The spell flared, lighting up the blade with familiar magic for just a moment, and at the same moment there came a surprised yelp from the ceiling, as a figure appeared there, apparently hanging upside down from the beam.

Not for long though, as the sword broke whatever spell was allowing this new stranger to cheat gravity so, and they promptly fell down from the ceiling, landing in a heap on the floor with an undignified squawk.

At the very same time, the girl with the braid and the armour had drawn her sword – sparkling with runes, Jester could not help but notice – stepping forward as the figure who had fallen from the ceiling got to their feet. As they did, Jester saw that it was, in fact, a young man dressed in a long black tailored coat with bright silver buttons, already scrambling to up, brushing his coat off and in the same movement drawing a hand crossbow with a completely unnecessary but very graceful flourish, pointing it at Nott and Yasha, who – in his defense, Jester thought – was still standing over him with her greatsword pointed at him, confusion on her face. But Nott pulled out her crossbow and was pointing it right back, Jester saw in alarm.

At this Caleb appeared, his invisibility dropping as he lit his hands on fire, rushing over to stand between the intruder and Nott. This also had the effect of dropping the invisibility on Fjord and Molly, who had both drawn their swords by now.

The girl who had called herself C had gritted her teeth, conjuring a shimmering wall of force that wound its way around her and the twins, and the man – or boy, Jester thought, for now she got a better look at him, he was probably also no older his late teens.

“Stop!” she shouted, her voice surprisingly loud and commanding in the small room. “There is no need for this. Astoria, no magic for now... _please_ , we don’t want another potted plant incident.”

“That was one time!”

She pursed her lips. “Yes, it certainly was a time. Maddie, likewise, and please put the sword away. Nikolai, are you alright?”

“Mm, well I fell from the ceiling...” the boy – Nikolai, apparently - rubbed the small of his back, looking reproachfully at Yasha. “I’ll be fine. I guess. But, uh, I thought we agreed no names until we’d made a deal?”

“….. _Balls._ ” the eldest sister said, with feeling. “You’re right.”

Caleb lowered his burning hands a fraction, eyes still narrowed suspiciously at the crossbow pointed at Nott and Yasha, and back to the girl who had spoken. “Um. Can anyone explain to me what is going on? Who is this person who was hanging from the ceiling? Are those magic boots?”

She gave a long-suffering sigh. “Yes. And that is my brother. Unfortunately.”

Nott blinked. “The...one we’re trying to find? Because that was quite easy… can we still have the money, even though he was just in the room but invisible and on the ceiling?”

“Not that brother. Per- I mean, our younger brother. He is twelve, and very definitely missing.”

“This would be easier if we could know his name” said Nott.

“Call him... Freddie” said Nikolai, exchanging a glance with his sister, who nodded slightly. “Besides, you’re one to talk about honesty and openness.” He raised his eyebrows at the three who had just materialised in the room. “Three extra people, huh? Were you expecting us to come in here and try to kill you?”

“The life of a professional detective is full of danger and intrigue” pronounced Nott, rather pointedly. “We’ve seen... _things_. Things like you wouldn’t believe.”

“We might” said Astoria. Of all the four siblings, she looked the least perturbed by this situation, Jester though. She was standing there with her hands shoved in her pockets, with that look that Molly got sometimes when he was looking at his cards, or Caleb when he was faced with a large stack of books. Curious, perhaps more than anything. “Try us.” She pointed at Fjord’s falchion. “What’s that thing, for example? It’s clearly a powerful magical object. Is that where your magic comes from, or is it the other way around and its magic comes from you?”

“Our lives are none of your business” said Molly quickly, as Fjord looked a little taken aback at the perceptiveness of this gangly adolescent. “We are...hmmm… I’m going to say we’re the backup for these two fine detectives to call in when they need us. So I’m afraid if you want them to find your little brother for you, you’ll need to put up with us a bit.”

“...That’s fair” said Nikolai. “Also, though, if whatever your friend with the magic sword did to me got rid of the magic in these boots for good, I’m going to have to take that out of the payment.”

“It shouldn’t be permanent” said Yasha, sheathing the Magician’s Judge, looking slightly apologetic. “It dispelled the invisibility, and the...upside-down-ness? But it doesn’t permanently break the spell on magic items. Not unless I want do that on purpose.”

“Good. These are on loan from my father, and I always bring things back when I borrow them.” He pointedly ignored more than one of his sisters’ incredulous snorts.

Jester raised an eyebrow. “Your father...the foreign diplomat...nobleman...?” she recalled. “...And magic boot owner?” She looked down at the boots he wore; they were made of finely tooled leather with a design that looked almost like spider webs, she saw, and were clearly some sort of magical.

“Hmm… close enough.” He flicked his hair back in an attempt at nonchalance. “Amongst other things.” He thought for a moment. “Though actually, I think mother would be the one who would be - ”

“Um.” His older sister interjected. “We were talking about making an agreement? I’d be more comfortable sharing information once that is done.”

“Yes!” said Nott, brightening. “Jester, get her the usual contract to sign. Caleb, please can you put out your fire hands, just for now? Thank you, not that it’s not wonderful, but maybe...now’s not the time.”

“...Of course.”

As Caleb withdrew, still eyeing the four siblings rather suspiciously, Jester got out a sheet of paper and began to draft a contract, her tongue clamped between her lips as she wrote. When she was done, she blew on the ink to dry it, as everyone waited in rather tense silence.

“There you are” she said at last, as all four siblings crowded around to read it. There was a pause, while all of their eyes moved back and forth over the lines.

“This seems...acceptable” said the eldest girl at length, exchanging looks with her siblings once more. Slowly, she drew out a pouch from an inside pocket, which clinked with the sound of coin as she dropped it onto the table. Then, she took up the quill, and signed her name, handing the paper back to Jester when she was done.

Jester squinted at the paper. “Cordelia Elaina von Musel Klossowski de Rolo the first, of Whitestone” she read. “ _That’s_ your name? ...It’s so _pretty_!”

“Thank you.” She extended a hand, which Jester took, shaking it enthusiastically. “Heir apparent to Whitestone, which, if you don’t know what that is...just take it on trust that it’s somewhat important, back where we call home. So I am sure you understand the need for discretion.” She smiled graciously. “This here is my brother Nikolai Vax’ildan von - ”

Nikolai was rolling his eyes, seemingly reflexively. “Do you really need to say the entire thing every time you introduce every single one of us - ”

“ - Musel Klossowski de Rolo. And these are my sisters - ”

“I’m Madeleine and this is Astoria” said Madeleine hastily, as her twin gave a half-hearted wave. “Our littlest brother Percival -”

“I thought you said his name was Freddie?”

“...on occasion known as Freddie - is...well, _in absentia_. We think...well, we are reasonably sure that he’s been kidnapped. And _that’s_ why we need your help.”


	2. Plots and plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (In which some secrets are revealed, and some are decidedly not.)

“Oh” said Nikolai, blinking in surprise as the disguise spell suddenly wore off Nott, her goblin’s ears popping back out of her hood. “Well. You’re…um.”

“A goblin, yes…” Nott’s ears drooped. “…Sorry?”

He shook his head, elbowing Madeleine, who was still gawping a little at the transformation, until she shut her mouth. “It’s all right. Forgive me, I’d just never seen…” he tailed off. “I mean, I’ve _seen_ disguise spells before, but never a goblin who - ”

“Who is a detective, yeah. That’s why I always change into something else when we meet new clients” said Nott, laying a placating hand on Caleb’s arm, before he could say anything. “Well, I hope it…doesn’t change anything?”

He gave her a long look. “…You know, I don’t think that it does. I’m very sorry, that was probably rude of me.”

“It’s fine” said Nott, shrugging. “It’s very reasonable to be scared of goblins.”

“I’m not - ”

“She’s not like - ”

“She’s a really good detective” put in Jester, standing with her hands on her hips and determinedly interrupting several people. “I don’t know what I’d do without her!”

“Well, that’s what we wanted” said Astoria, smiling genuinely. “I read once that goblins are really good at finding things. Which is what we came for, after all.”

She actually looked very curious, Nott was surprised to see, leaning close and peering at Nott’s face. Up close, Astoria’s mismatched eyes were very odd for a human’s, Nott thought. Surely that couldn’t be natural; it had to be the result of some magic. She put the thought from her mind for now, returning the girl’s smile. “I’m glad” said Nott.

“Well,” said Madeleine, “now that we’ve – oh, _holy shit_! You too?”

They all turned to see that the disguise spell had worn off Caduceus, too, and he had grown a foot or two so that his head nearly touched the ceiling. “Hmm? Are you speaking to me?”

“Ah…unless it’s rude to ask… _what_ are you?”

“That _is_ rude, Madeleine! Imagine if someone asked you that?”  

“I’m Caduceus Clay” he said, shaking a confused Madeleine’s hand in his much larger one, offering no further explanation but a placid smile. “Pleased to meet you. Again.”

“…Pleased to meet you too. And… um… sorry?”

“Yes, sorry for my siblings” said Cordelia, with a quelling look at the others. “We don’t mean it in a bad way. We are just… rather on edge right now. So, it’s not the fact that you’re…” she gestured, helplessly.

“It’s just…” picked up Nikolai, “are any more of you disguised as someone else? I would rather know now, because this will only work if we’re all honest with each other.”

“Not to my knowledge” said Caduceus blithely, scrutinising the others for a moment. “And I can usually tell these things.”

The siblings did not look reassured. “He’s really good at telling stuff about people” explained Jester, as Caduceus apparently lost interest in the conversation and turned aside to see to the kettle that was heating over the range in the corner of their rented office. He began to pour water over sprinklings of flowers in a very large number of mismatched earthenware cups. “And making tea. That’s why he’s a really good person for a detective agency to have around. See?”

“Well…yes I suppose I do.”

“Good” said Jester, clasping her hands. “Well, shall we get to the part with the evidence and stuff?

“Yes, of course.” Cordelia immediately straightened up, face grave again.

“So, let me get this sequence of events straight” said Fjord, peering over Jester’s shoulder at the notes she had been taking. He made a face, standing up and walking around the table to perch on the other side. “What happened was, y’all came over here from Tal’dorei - ”

“To visit a friend of the family, yes” said Madeleine. “He lives just outside of Deastok. We’ve been before, but never without our parents, on official visits and such. But Cordelia and Nikolai are old enough now that mother and father trust them to look after us…” she made a face. “So we were allowed to go and visit Wildemount alone for the first time. And we were just a little side-trip to Zadash before going south to meet uncle Tary. See the sights, you know? We had heard it was a beautiful city.”

“Well, it is” said Jester. “I can recommend you some good bakeries, once we find you brother again!”

“Yeah, let’s stay on-subject” said Fjord hastily, as Madeleine frowned, fiddling nervously with the end of her braid. There were a few white feathers tied onto it, Jester noticed, a little the worse for wear.

“You said the last time you saw your brother was two days ago?”

“Yes” said Cordelia. “We’ve tried every spell we have that allows tracking, or detection, but nothing seems to work. I know that there are magical cloaking devices that can do that…”

“ _Ja_ , there are. There are many ways to do such a thing.” Caleb fiddled with the strap of one of his book holsters, thinking for a moment. “If _I_ were trying to hide someone I would likely use a magic item if I could, rather than a spell that would have to be recast.”

“Well, never mind” said Nott at the siblings’ looks of disappointment, trying for a reassuring voice. “We can still track him down without magic. That’s what we’re here for! So let’s get the rest of the basics…can you tell me _where_ you last saw him?”

Nikolai nodded. “We had a suite of rooms in a lodging house, over in the Tri-Spires. The Three Lanterns. It’s a nice place, very reputable, and by recommendation! We didn’t expect…” he tailed off, running a hand through the front of his hair and collecting himself. “We left him in our suite and went down to the bar. Now, I know what you’re going to say, that was…unwise…” he fiddled with a button on his coat, looking aggrieved. “But it should have been fine! Cordelia put up this alarm thing that she does around his room!”

“It’s a spell that wards an area” Cordelia explained. “Essentially, you string a piece of silver thread around it and if any intruder comes in it…rings the alarm.”

“Yes, Caleb uses that one all the time” said Nott, nodding. “And it didn’t ring?”

Cordelia looked almost as downtrodden as her brother, shaking her head. “We returned, and the alarm hadn’t been touched. Nor had the room, or any of our things. But our brother was gone.”

“…I see.”

“And so was Pinecone” put in Astoria, frowning. “That’s what I find strangest of all.”

Molly looked down at her, blankly. “Pinecone?”

“Oh, Pinecone is an owlbear” said Astoria. “She’s not dangerous!” she added hastily, seeing their alarm. “Not to us at least. She’s Freddie’s companion, and she loves him. ….Mother and Aunt Keyleth found her in the Feywild, abandoned…I guess the werewolves might have killed her mother and siblings? But they brought her back and gave her to Freddie and the two of them have been inseparable ever since.” She tapped her cheek thoughtfully with a finger, as the Mighty Nein stood listening with increasing incredulity. “There was one time, when Freddie and mother and Trinket and I were in the mountains, and there were some harpies. And one of them tried to pick up Freddie and carry him off, and mother shot it with an arrow but it wasn’t enough to kill it, but Pinecone just… _leaped_. Into the air, roaring so loud, down a vertical cliff. She caught the harpy and ripped its throat out with her beak before it could grab him. Even mother and Trinket were impressed.” Astoria was grinning proudly, apparently unconscious of the rather disturbed looks they were giving her. She frowned. “Anyway. Point is, Pinecone was only a baby then, practically, too, and she’s still not fully grown yet – only about six feet tall - but she could definitely take a kidnapper or two. Certainly, it would be hard to get past her without wrecking the place and making a huge fuss, alarm or no alarm.”

“…Dare I ask who Trinket is?”

“Oh, Trinket’s also a bear” she clarified, helpfully. “Just a regular bear, mind. But he’s part of the family.”

Molly frowned; it was painfully clear from his face that he was suppressing the impulse to ask _who even are you people_. And coming from him, that was something. “Did it look like there had been a fight in the room?”

Nikolai shook his head. “That’s what’s so strange. There was no sign of a struggle. Nothing.”

“Well, my first thought would be some sort of teleportation spell” said Caleb, already taking out one of his books and beginning to leaf through it. “I would say a dimension door, but - ”

“ _But_ that would also set off the alarm, if one were to teleport inside it. And that spell can only carry one extra being, who has to be willing to go along with it” supplied Cordelia, nodding. She opened her leather satchel, putting her whole arm inside past the elbow, rummaging around for a few seconds before drawing out a book of her own. It was a bit thicker than Caleb’s, and certainly in better condition, bound in crisp powder-blue linen. The pages marked with neat, coloured slips of paper, making it faster for her to leaf through. “That was my first thought too” she said, ignoring Caleb as he narrowed his eyes slightly at the sight of this. “So, some more powerful teleportation spell, or magic item then” she said, still leafing through the book. “Now, it wasn’t a permanent teleportation circle; they wouldn’t have had the time. So, something with a smaller range.”

“Which means that their bolt-hole – even a temporary one - must be within the city.”

“It does seem probably, yes.”

“But they didn’t have to _stay_ in the city” said Jester. “They could have just teleported somewhere else! They could be anywhere by now!”

“Thus, the problem, and the reason we hired you people” said Cordelia, rather acidly.

“Ignore her. She’s just worried about him” explained Nikolai. “We all are.”

There was a short silence, in which Nott patted Cordelia’s arm awkwardly. She flinched just a little at first, but then after a moment she relaxed, just a little.

“Well” said Caduceus, breaking the silence. “It seems we have a place to start looking.”

“Yeah!” piped up Jester. “We should go to your rooms – the scene of the crime! - and look for _clues_!”

“…Okay, I guess we can take you there.”

“Actually” interjected Molly, “I think we should have a few of us go off on a little side mission. After all, we have another place to start too.”

Everyone turned to look at him. “We do?”

Molly’s eyes darted around the room and focused on the four de Rolos, grouped around the desk where Jester was sitting, with Nott perched on one corner. “Um. No offense my dears, but may I borrow my friends – ah, I mean, Jester and Nott’s detective team – for a quick meeting in private?”

Cordelia tilted her head. “…Of course.”

“Team huddle!” yelled Jester, making everyone’s ears ring. Astoria jumped a little bit where she was standing, clamping her hands reflexively over her head, which Jester apparently missed entirely. “Mighty Nein huddle, assemble!”

“Yes, I think we should have a meeting too” said Cordelia, drawing her siblings together, already beginning the incantation to cast a magical bubble around them.

* * *

“So, Molly, what’s your big plan?” asked Jester.

“Well dear, what I was thinking was…we know a place where people hang around who might be the  sort to kidnap children…don’t we?”

“…We do?”

“We work for them, dear.”

She blinked. “You want to ask the _Gentleman_?”

Molly grinned slightly. “I do think we should go ask your dad, yes.”

As Jester frowned, Beau spoke up. “Only some of us, though. Like, the shadier ones, that wouldn’t be let in this fancy place in the Tri-Spires.”

“That seems sensible” said Caleb, grimacing and holding Frumpkin closer. “I will go.”

“I’ll go with Caleb” said Nott, immediately. She shot a glance over at their clients, who were huddled close together whispering. “I get the feeling they don’t like me, anyway.”

“They’re rich kids from far away who have probably never seen a goblin before” said Molly. “I’m sure they’ll come to like you. _I_ get the feeling they’re learning a lot about the world, these last few days, very fast. I can relate to that.”

“Yes, and we’re here to help them” said Jester, firmly. “Okay, so let’s do this. Molly, do you want to go to the Gentleman too, since it was your idea?”

“…Not particularly, I’ll admit. But Cree might have some information, and she’s probably more likely to tell me…” he made a face, “…or to tell Lucien, anyway.”

“I’ll go too” said Beau, shrugging as everyone looked at her. “Crime stuff, right?”

“Right” said Fjord, nodding. “So it’s me, Jester, Yasha and Caduceus off to the Tri-Spires. That okay with everyone?”

They all nodded. “I’ll try and reassure the kids on the way” said Caduceus. “This must be hard for them.”

“Sure.”

“I just want to help them!” said Jester, throwing up her hands. “The little one who got kidnapped…he must be so scared!”

Beau patted her awkwardly on the arm. “We’ll find him” she said. “You’re…you know. Actually a good detective. Nott, you too.”

“It’s because we have you guys to help us” said Jester, smiling. She put on a determined face. “Now, let’s go kick some child-kidnapper butt!”

“Hopefully.”

* * *

“I don’t trust them” said Nikolai, as soon as they were alone in Cordelia’s magical bubble.

“Nikolai, just because they’re a goblin and…whatever that guy is? Doesn’t mean they’re bad!” said Astoria.

“That’s the least of my concerns” said Nikolai. “Two of them were disguised, and a bunch more were invisible! They lied to us deliberately.”

“We lied to them too! You were invisible and on the ceiling!”

“Yes, but… that’s just what I _do_. And surely detectives – _if_ they’re really detectives – get that sort of thing a lot.”

“Yes, but still…”

“I could see them, all along” put in Cordelia. “I would have warned you if anything was off.”

“You could…” he turned to her, glaring. “ _How_ could you see them?”

She tapped the side of her glasses, indicating the minute switch there. “Truesight. I still have it for…” she thought for a while. “About thirty more minutes.”

“Damn you and your glasses” Nikolai grumbled. “How come Gilmore always gives you the best birthday presents?”

“Because I am the eldest, and, of course, the superior sibling in all ways” she said rather loftily, smiling and ruffling his hair. “Any other questions?”

“Nikolai, you can’t be jealous of other people’s magic stuff if you’ve got father’s spider boots” griped Astoria. “I want to try those some time!”

“You’ll have to take them off my dead body, sister dear” he said, grinning back and patting her on the cheek. She hissed like an angry cat, which he pointedly ignored, turning back to Cordelia. “And yes, I have another question” he said. “Why is all the fucking planes of existence did you sign that contract with them, if you knew they were lying to us?”

“I second that” said Madeleine, folding her ams.

“Because…” Cordelia frowned, serious suddenly. “Because… I’m really worried about Freddie. And because we’ve tried to track him, and it didn’t work.” Her hands twisted up in the cloth of her coat a little. “I’m not used to my magic not working. For all the magic items we have, we don’t know this place, this country, much less how…I don’t know, how the criminal underworld or whatever works here.” She indicated the others. “But they do. And I think it might just be our only chance to get him back.”

There was a short silence. Madeleine sighed. “I hate it when you’re right.”

“…That’s as may be. But you know, there’s another way.” Nikolai fiddled with the buttons on his coat. “You know we could send a message to uncle Tary, and he’d send in his brigade and fix this, and then it would be over. We were supposed to be going to visit him, anyway.”

Cordelia’s face was pained. “We could. But then mother and father would find out. And there would probably be a whole diplomatic incident that would ruin all that they’ve been working for in their relations with the Dwendalian Empire.”

“…Right” he said, with a searching, narrow-eyed look.

She sighed. “All I ask is that you trust me. And that we trust them, for a little while at least. The four of us…we’re capable of fixing this. Mother and father trusted us enough to let us travel alone, didn’t they?” she swallowed, nervous. “They trusted _me_ to look after all of you.”

“Cordelia…”

“Look, if it goes wrong, and we’re in over our heads, or if we think Freddie is in more danger, then we tell mother and father. But for now…” she looked around her younger siblings, catching each of their eyes. “I’m just asking you to go with this for a bit. Please?”

“I will” said Astoria.

“…I will too” said Madeleine, casting a surruptitious look over her shoulder. “I’ll be watching them, though.”

“I would hope you would. Nikolai?”

He sighed. “…Fine.” He forced a smile. “You know me, always on board for a little subterfuge. But if anything goes wrong…”

She nodded. “Thank you. I understand.” She frowned for a moment, reaching into her pocket and taking out an ornate pocket watch, squinting at it with a sigh. “Speaking of which, it’s time to call father and mother and tell them that everything is fine.”

“Rather you than me. You know how they can just _tell_ when everything is…not fine.”

“Psh. They’d worry more if we didn’t call. Besides, I’ve been avoiding telling them the whole truth since before you were born.”

“You were approximately one year old when I was born.”

“You know what I mean” said Cordelia, pulling out a Sending stone on its cord around her neck. “Right. Here we go…”

* * *

“What’s the time? Is it time yet? Did we miss them?”

Percy pulled a watch on a chain – the exact double of his eldest daughter’s - from his waistcoat pocket and flipped it open. “No, we’re not late” he said. “But they are.” He frowned a little. “Several minutes late, and that is quite a lot for Cordelia.” Their eldest daughter was nothing if not meticulous. “I wonder if the synchronisation is off.” He hesitated. “I hope they’re all right.”

“I’m sure they’re just fine” said Vex, though she narrowed her eyes. “Do you think they could have lost the stone?”

“I doubt it” said Percy, laying his hands on hers where they clutched a fraction tighter at her own sending stone. “I’m sure any minute they’ll - ”

Sure enough, even as he said the words, the stone in Vex’s hands pulsed with a soft glow of magic, and they heard their daughter’s voice emanating from it, as clearly as though Cordelia were standing right there in the sitting room beside them.

“ _Hello mother, father, Aunt Cass if you’re there,_ _Trinket_ _. We’re fine. In Zadash for a few days. Made some friends. Heading south as soon as_ \- ”

And there the message cut out. Vex gave a slightly exasperated sigh, but she smiled, meeting Percy’s eyes as he finished counting words on his fingers, and speaking back into the stone. “Twenty-five words, remember dear. Glad to hear you’re happy. Keep Nikolai out of trouble, and twins, careful with the magic.” She nodded at Percy, who was mouthing _tell them we love them!_ at her exaggeratedly, making a heart gesture with his hands. “We love you, darlings!” she sang, unable to suppress a smile. And then there was the little magical click that marked the end of the message, and the stone went silent once more.

Vex turned to Percy. “…Did you think there was something wrong? Was it just me, or was there something in her voice…”

“I mean, I know your ability to notice these things far outpaces my own, but I thought she seemed fine? Why, do _you_ think there was something wrong?”

She frowned. “…No, it’s probably nothing. I’m sure they’re having a wonderful time.”

“I’m certain of that much, at least.”

Vex sighed, looping the Sending stone’s cord around her neck once more, tucking it into the front of her shirt. “…I miss them” she said, leaning back against him on the sofa.

“I miss them too.”

“It’s good for them to get away” Vex said again, the words familiar now, with the number of times they had told each other this. “Remember what Keyleth said? We can’t pressure them too much. We have to let them find their own paths. She’s right, I think. A journey is good for them.”

“Though hopefully with fewer monsters and malevolent entities hellbent on destroying all that we hold dear than Keyleth encountered on _her_ first trip away from home.”

“That was the idea, yes” said Vex, grinning. “And hopefully a trip to visit Tary should fall somewhere within the ideal range.”

“ _Hopefully_ being the operative word there.”

She laughed. “They’ll be fine. You’ll see, dear. Cordelia and Nikolai are adults now, and if I believe in anything I believe in the ability of siblings to protect one another.” She smiled. “It got me and Vax a long way in much worse circumstances, after all.”

“True, but I can’t help thinking that maybe we should have kept the younger ones at home, for now…maybe Freddie, and even the twins. I worry about Astoria especially, after… you know.”

“I do. But they’d never have accepted that and you know it.” She grinned. “Besides, I thought you were the one saying they would be fine, just a moment ago?”

“…Yes, of course you’re right as always.” He wrapped his arms around her, and frowned. “But you’ve got me worrying too now.”

“Oh no. I’m sorry, darling. But if it helps, I think…” Vex took his hands, with a sigh. “I _hope_ that if there was anything seriously wrong, anything they couldn’t handle, then they’d tell us. Or at least go to Tary for help. He’s the most capable person that side of the sea, I suppose.”

“Yes” said Percy, dropping a kiss onto the crown of Vex’s head in a thoughtful sort of way. “Well. I suppose it’ll be all right either way… after all, it’s not as though there is no one watching over them.”

Vex smiled. “You’re right, of course. It was the right decision, and I don’t even have quite such a bad feeling about that part as I did to start with.”

“I still have a little bit of a bad feeling about that part” admitted Percy. “But things will work out well in the long run, I’m sure.”

“No you’re not” said Vex. “You’re never, ever sure of things like that. Never have been, never will be.” She booped him on the nose, playfully. “Always second guessing yourself.”

He laughed, pulling her closer and touching foreheads. “For everything to do with how to parent five children? Yes, absolutely. But with you it makes it a little easier.”

“I’m glad to hear it” said Vex. 

* * *

As Cordelia put down the Sending stone, and dissipated her bubble so that Jester could tell them the plan, on the other side of the city a newcomer was arriving in Zadash. It was just beginning to rain, as woman in a long, charcoal grey cloak with a hood came to the city gates. She dismounted from her horse and exchanged pleasantries with the Crownsguard on duty, taking down her hood and speaking in clipped, formal, but gracious tones, with only the slightest hint of a foreign accent. She slipped a sum of money into the palm of a hand with the utmost discretion, and a minute later she was past the guard post, riding into the city to begin her search. The very first thing she did was to find a stable for her horse; she must be discrete, which meant travelling light, and on foot. It was beginning to grow dark as she tipped the ostler, pulled her hood up, to better cover her face; perfectly reasonable, as the rain was growing heavier.

By the time she reached the street she sought, it was full dark, but the lamplighter was coming around to cast magical orbs of light that would hang in the air until morning and illuminate the city streets. And so it still light enough to read the tavern sign, even with her relatively weak human eyes.

The Evening Nip, she had heard from her various sources, was the place to go to to meet the kind of people she needed to speak to. She smoothed a crumpled piece of paper in her hand, folding it and unfolding it as she mentally rehearsed the words she had been told, thinking of what – or whom – she might find there, and what she might do when she did.

She would not fail, she knew. She could not: too much relied on this, and after all, the cause was very close to her heart indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I hope you're enjoying this! I very much am...it feels like one of the most self-indulgent fics I've written in a while, but it's fun, so I don't care. Also, I've written up a tumblr post bunch of my detailed headcanons about the five de Rolo kids [here](http://kanafinwhy.tumblr.com/post/180389264662/percahlia-kids-headcanons), so check that out if you like this!


	3. Mistaken targets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (In which the real case-relevant information may or may not have been the friends, or otherwise, we made along the way.)

Beauregard leaned against the bar, taking a sip from her tankard of ale as she watched Molly talking to Cree across the room. His tail was flicking from side to side in that way he had when he was growing increasingly agitated; she wondered if he noticed, and if Cree noticed, and whether she should go over there and rescue him. Or start a cryptic conversation heavily implying that he should learn to mask his tells, already.  

Maybe not, she thought. Maybe that would only make things worse. She scanned the rest of the room; she caught the slightest glimpse of Nott before she slipped into a shadow behind a stack of spare benches. Caleb sat at the long table at the other end from the Gentleman and his close attendants, nursing a pint of his own and pretending to read. It was a very good pretense; his eyes were even moving, though at the pace of a normal person’s eyes, rather than the unsettlingly fast motion they made when he was actually reading. That was the way you could tell when he was faking it, Beau had long since learned. But no one except the Mighty Nein knew that – or at least, no one Beau thought they had to worry about right now – and so Caleb’s position as secret lookout was probably safe. 

Other than her friends, most of the patrons of the bar under the Evening Nip were familiar enough to be uninteresting. She spotted Kara, over in the corner, a book in front of her and a drink in her hand. Beau watched her for a little while, realising that Kara’s eyes weren’t moving over the lines of text at all.

Watching too, then. Kara always seemed to be watching someone or something. Or just straight-up scheming. Beau let herself watch Kara for a bit longer, admiring the way that her auburn hair glowed in the candlelight, the muscles in her bare arm flickering in the light as she turned a page of the book she was pretending to read.

After a moment, Kara’s eyes flicked up, catching Beau’s for a moment before she could turn away. For a second, Kara smirked at being watched so, before dropping her eyes deliberately back to the page in front of her, taking a drink in a way that was almost guileless, utterly ignoring Beau.

She gritted her teeth, looking around at the others. Molly was still speaking to Cree, and Caleb was still pretending to read, and who knew where Nott had gone. Thus, Beau decided that since no one seemed to immediately need her, she could afford to take some time for some recreational flirting.

She threw back the last few fingers of her drink, rooted in her coin purse, leaning on the bar as she ordered two more pints of ale. Once they had arrived, Beau headed over to the corner where Kara sat, threw her leg over the bench in a way that she hoped counted as nonchalant, and sat down, setting the two tankards on the table.

She slid one of them over to Kara, summoning her best smile when Kara looked up with a raised eyebrow. The smile seemed to be a mistake, as the eyebrow raised even higher, so Beau stopped smiling and took a long gulp of her own drink, reverting to more standard tactics. “Hey” she said. “’sup?”

Kara squinted at the pint that Beau had bought her, and took a pointed sip of her original drink. “Well I was sitting here observing the goings on in this fine establishment -” she gestured around the dingy bar “ - but I guess we’re having a conversation now” she said.

“…Wow. I’m that bad to be around that you don’t even want another drink out of it, huh?”

Her face stayed serious for just a moment, before she grinned, at Beau’s disappointed look. Her eyes sparkled with amusement as she took another drink, this time of the drink Beau had brought her. “You know what? I’m actually alright with double-fisting.” She stifled a laugh at Beau’s face, indicating her drinks. “Two’s better than one and all.”

“Sure” said Beau, collecting herself and leaning forward against the table, chin resting on her hand so she could get a better look at Kara. “I just thought…long time no see, you know?” She frowned. This was getting awkward. “So…what have you been up to? Crime stuff for the Gentleman, or…?”

Kara shot Beau a look. “Crime stuff…kind of? But you know I’ve always been a bit of a freelancer.”

Beau leaned forward a bit on her hand. “Tell me more.”

Kara gave her a slightly suspicious look. “Well” she said, “I’ve been working actually, undercover. Well. Not so much undercover. I just have a job. But I don’t think it’s…expected, exactly, for chamber maids in fancy establishments like that to come to places like this.” She gestured around, dropping her voice. “And…if you want in on another push against the Empire, then…there’s something that might come together soon.”

“Oh? Did you…find something out?”

Kara took another sip of her drink, smiling archly. “If I had, do you really think I’d be stupid enough to tell you without some assurance that you’re not going to blurt it out as soon as some pretty girl bats her lashes at you?”

Beau, rather overwhelmed and still unsure to what extent this conversation was about what she thought it was, decided to take a chance. “Uhh…I dunno… _would_ you?”

Kara laughed. “Well, since you asked so nicely. So, a while ago – when I was with the Knights, actually - I was doing some research. You know those firearms, that the Crownsguard have?”

Beau nodded, thinking of Nott. “Yeah?”

“Well, I was doing a little bit of digging into the history of their use. A lot of it is pretty secret information, but I’ve got…friends, who can get me access to things.”

“Of course you do” said Beau.

“As do you, I assume” said Kara, looking Beau up and down. Beau gritted her teeth, trying to tell herself that Kara was taking in her Cobalt Soul robes, and nothing else. “But anyway” continued Kara, apparently unperturbed. “This information is hard to get, but it seems they were invented less than thirty years ago, over in Tal’dorei.”

Beau nodded; she’d heard of this, vaguely. “The Terrible Tinkerer of Tal’dorei, right?” she said. She frowned; she had heard a rather drunk Molly tell her that story around the campfire one night, in the form of a very annoying ballad from his circus days that he only remembered some of the words to. “I thought that was bullshit?” She had assumed they’d been invented in some sinister research facility in Rexxentrum, rather than by a single person.

But Kara’s eyes glittered. “No” she said. “I mean, there is a _lot_ of bullshit surrounding their history here, but it seems that at least this Tinkerer is a real person.”

“… _Is_?”

“That’s what I said, yeah.”

Beau blinked. “Huh. And who are they?”

“That was…less immediately clear” said Kara. “I managed to track the record back to a woman named Ripley, who used to work for the Empire up in Rexxentrum. She was wanted for…oh, a long list of crimes. Don’t know how many of them are fabricated, but some are definitely real. I’ll believe any sinister shit about that kind of person, at this point.”

Beau thought of Caleb, suppressing a wince. “What sort of crimes?”

Kara counted off on her fingers. “Oh, illegal experimentation on living subjects, unsanctioned necromantic practice, illicit use of Empire technology, and suspected spying for a foreign power. That last was probably drummed up by the Crown to excuse taking her out, but I’m sure some of the rest are true.”

“…Yikes” said Beau, unable to think of anything more insightful.

“Exactly. Shady character, you know the type. But she was a tinkerer. And when they put out a warrant for her arrest she fled across the sea to Tal’dorei, but she came back at some point, it seems. The records get extremely hazy around then; that was around the time that half the cities in Tal’dorei were wiped off the map by dragon attacks. Maybe Ripley died in one of those attacks, I don’t know. But anyway, she disappeared under mysterious circumstances. It doesn’t matter though, because there’s a paper trail linking one of her aliases to several of the very first recorded sources of these firearms.”

“So you think this Ripley is their inventor?” asked Beau. She had no idea where this conversation was leading, but it was nice to watch Kara’s eyes light with enthusiasm over this, even if it was the kind of historical stuff that Beau would find painfully dull in other circumstances.

“That was my initial hunch, yes” said Kara. “But then I managed to get access to some of her original notes. And there are some marginalia that suggest something interesting, which was that she copied the designs from someone else.” Kara grinned. “Now, at the time that was where the trail ended… but just recently, and quite by coincidence, I found out that this individual is still alive. And even better, I found a rather…” she gestured in the air as though casting around for words, “…direct way to get their attention. I’m expecting news, any day now.”

“Huh. Cool” said Beau. She furrowed her brow. “Who is it? And like… why do you care so much anyway?”

Kara shot her a teasing grin over the side of her glass. “If I told you I’d have to kill you, I’m afraid. …Unless you want in on this, that is. That would be a different story.” She thought for a moment. “Actually, if you and your Mighty Nein did want to come on board for this, I wouldn’t say no. There aren’t many of us, and it seems like your kind of thing.”

“Uh, no thanks” Beau said. “We’ve actually on a job, right now. Detective stuff.”

Kara raised her eyebrow again, eyeing Beau’s drink and the way her arm was creeping closer to Kara’s along the table. “Ah yes. I can tell you’re working hard.”

“Yeah” said Beau, shrugging. “Shit’s been unproductive, but you know.” She gestured over to Molly, who was standing next to Cree over by the bar, protesting being bought another drink. He turned to Beau just enough to give her a wide-eyed look of desperation, flicking the point of his tail across his throat in a way that said, unmistakably, _please can we_ _get the fuck out of here_.

“Oh” said Kara, following Beau’s gaze. “Time to go?”

“Um, yeah, should… probably deal with that” said Beau, making a mental note to kick Molly’s ass for interrupting her quite deserved and enjoyable flirting session, even if it had gotten a bit boring and historical at the end there. “Enjoy your paper trails and shit.”

Kara raised her tankard in a mock salute, as Beau followed Molly, Caleb falling into step beside them.

It was only a moment later that she noticed that Nott was not with them, as they stepped onto the stairs to the main bar. She frowned, meeting Caleb’s eye, about to ask him whether she had gone ahead or been left behind, when Nott materialised at their heels, slipping between Beau and Caleb.

Caleb smiled affectionately down at her as they climbed the stairs. “Did you get what you wanted?”

“I got some things” said Nott, as they emerged through the door into the main, ground level bar. “Beau, thanks for distracting Kara. She had… good pockets. Wonderful angle.”

Beau frowned, wondering if she should disapprove of being used as a distraction. She didn’t see why not; Kara was intriguing, and fun to flirt with sometimes, but Beau didn’t really feel like she owed her anything much, and certainly not a warning about Nott’s sticky fingers in crowded places. “Get anything good?”

Nott shrugged, as they stepped out into the street. “Pretty necklace…”

“You stole a necklace? Right off her _neck_?”

“Not off her neck!” said Nott, pulling out a surprisingly large black pendant on a chain, made of black crystal cut to a sharp point. It glittered as Nott swung it back and forth, admiring the shine. “It was in her pocket.”

“Huh.”

“…And I think it might be a bit magic, so Caleb, maybe you could take a look at it later?”

“ _Ja_ , of course I can, but…” he winced, as they entered the more crowded upper bar, dropping his voice instinctively as they forced their way past the knot of people clustered around the tables pressed up against the wall. He winced, as Beau bumped shoulders with a woman in a long grey cloak, who gave them a disapproving stare from under her hood as they squeezed past and nearly knocked her drink off the bar. “Let’s get out of here first.”

Nott nodded, and hastily tucked the necklace back into her belt-pouch, scampering after the rest of them as they reached the door and stepped out into the rainy, darkening street outside.

They walked a little way in silence, hurrying through the rain and sticking to the shadows cast by the street lamps, as they made their way away from the Evening Nip.

When they arrived back at the headquarters of the Nott the Best Detective Agency – not much more than a rented room above a tavern in a side-street that branched off main thoroughfare to the Pentamarket, but it was beginning to feel a little like home at least – they found that Jester, their clients, and the others were not back yet.

On seeing this, Nott had decided that they would start debriefing about their mission and making notes so that they had something to show when the others returned. And so she had put Molly in their consultation chair, and was currently sitting behind the desk with her chin in her hands trying her best to interview him, as Caleb diligently took notes on one side of the desk and Beau paced back and forth across the room.

So far, on balance, it was not going very well.

“I don’t know what else to tell you. I didn’t learn anything about a kidnapped child” said Molly. “I think this is a dead end. I don’t think Cree knows anything after all…she doesn’t seem to deal in that kind of stuff.”

“She is around the Gentleman a lot. I would have thought if any of his people are responsible for this, Cree would be in on it too.”

“Well if she is, she’s not saying anything.” His ears twitched in annoyance. “Though for all I know she might and I was asking the wrong questions…”

“If you found out more about Lucien then maybe you’d know what questions to ask” said Nott. She shrugged, as Molly gave her a look that could curdle milk. “Just saying!”

“Ah…this was a long shot, anyway” said Caleb, hastily.

“There was one thing…” said Molly.

“Oh?”

“She offered to track him for me if I could get some of his blood…” he grimaced, “…and I asked if sibling blood would work too, and she gave me this really strange look…I guess that was something I was supposed to know.”

“So, out of curiosity, _would_ that work?”

Molly looked slightly pained. “I genuinely have no idea.”

“Let’s save the blood magic on the kids for a last resort” put in Beau quickly.

“I agree” said Caleb. “Besides, if they have the boy magically cloaked, chances are it would not work anyway.” He set his pen down with a sigh. “As it happens, Mollymauk, I did not hear anything useful from the Gentleman, either, even though I eavesdropped for half the night. We will just have to see if the others have done better.”

“What about you, Beau?” asked Nott, peering up at her curiously. “Get anything from Kara?”

“I wish” said Beau, with a slight leer that made Nott roll her eyes. “Saving my charm for Yasha” said Beau with a half-hearted grin by way of explanation, making Nott roll her eyes even harder.

“So, what were you talking about for all that time then?” asked Caleb, curiously.

“Sometimes some of us like to have normal conversations where we’re not just trying to get things from each other, Caleb.”

He fixed her with a skeptical look. Frumpkin, dozing on Caleb’s lap as he had been making notes, lifted his head and gave her an identical look.

Beau sighed, and thought for a moment. “Some stuff she’s been looking into lately. Oh, and she offered us a job. I think?”

“What sort of job?”

“It was kind of unclear? I _think_ it involves blackmailing someone, again…and also like, a shit ton of archive research maybe?”

“…I am listening” said Caleb, at the same time as Molly made a pained noise.

“That _could_ be good” said Nott. “But we already have a job, for now. So let’s wait for the others and see if they have any leads and then - ”

“…Nott?”

She had broken off, eyes wide as her head darted upwards, then to the door. “Did you hear something, outside the door?”

Beau frowned. “No?”

“ _Nein_.”

“Me neither.”

They all stopped and listened for a while.

“Huh” said Nott. Slowly, she went to the door, pulling it open a crack; there was no one there, so she closed it again. “I just… thought I heard the sound of a blade being drawn…?” She broke off, and this time, there came a sound outside the door that they all heard; the very very faint, but still audible, sound of a creak in the floorboards.

“I’m going to go look” said Nott, decisive.

“Okay. Do you want me to come with you?”

“No, Caleb, I’ll be fine. It’s probably nothing… I’ll be right back.”

And with that, she slipped out of the door into the empty passageway.

Once outside, she frowned, pressing herself backwards into the shadows between the lamp sconces that ran along the corridor as she watched and listened. She tried to breathe as quietly as she could behind the mask, and began to slowly reach down to pull out her crossbow, loading a bolt with practiced silence.

She felt a little braver with it in her hands. Brave enough, at least, to scamper along the corridor on light feet, sticking to where the shadows pooled.

Up ahead was a turn in the corridor. Nott pulled up short, wary again, trying to listen. Once again, there it was, that creak in the floorboards; very close, just around the corner where the corridor met the stairwell.

She took a deep breath, wondering if she should go get the others.

Quickly, she made a decision. Pressing her back to the wall still, she pointed the tip of the crossbow around the corner. But even as she did, there came a bright flash of the tip of a blade from just around it clipping the string with a single, well-aimed swipe. Nott was caught off guard by the release of tension rocketing up her arm, and let out a startled sound as the bolt clattered useless to the wooden floor. But she was able to collect herself enough to draw her other weapons; her gun was already loaded, and the sound of its cocking was too loud in the expectant silence, but, she thought with annoyance, watch them try to sabotage _that_. In her off-hand, she drew her sword, pointing the barrel of the gun around the corner, and then a moment later throwing herself forward into the middle of the corridor to face whoever was there.

She was prepared for a fight. She was prepared to shoot them head on, or get into a sword fight which would quickly bring the others running.

She was prepared for someone who was less stealthy than she was; most people were, after all.

She was not, however, prepared for a hand to come up around her face from the side, covering her mouth, another to reach up and grab her wrist in the hand that held the gun and bend her arm back until she cried out in muffled pain and instinctively dropped the weapon to the floor. She tried to cry out, or to bite at the leather-gloved palm covering her mouth, but her own mask was pressed so tightly against her nose and mouth that she could barely breathe, let alone move her mouth enough to try to save herself. Even her free arm with the shortsword was at the wrong angle; all she could do was flail uselessly at the air in front of her, while being held from behind.

As she did, the person holding her pressed her close against their body, freeing up their arm to pick up a bright blade, holding it to Nott’s throat. They were crouching down, but now they leaned forward so their face was beside her own. Out of her peripheral vision, Nott could see a dark grey woolen hood of a cloak, a humanoid nose and mouth. A woman’s perhaps, she thought. The rest of the face was hidden from her by the hood. Nott tried to yell out behind her mask once more, but it was no good.

“If you want your miserable life to carry on much longer, I suggest you remain silent until we get to a place where we can talk like civilised people” said the woman, her voice barely above a whisper, but somehow cutting, clear as a teaspoon struck against a glass. “No screaming, no alerting your companions…” she turned Nott’s head a little, to allow Nott’s skin to press a little closer to the cold metal of the sword’s edge, “…otherwise, we will have to do this…in a messier way than I would prefer.”

Nott tried and failed to snarl, behind the mask. “ _Who are you?_ ” she tried to say.

The woman seemed to understand her, for she shifted. “I am… a guardian. A temporarily appointed one, at least. But I would have you know that I take my responsibility seriously.”

“ _What do you want from me?_ ”

“I would like to know what you know about a certain missing child” she said, evenly. She reached forward with a booted foot, prodding the gun that Nott had dropped with her a toe, and made a sound of distaste in her throat. “…Amongst other things.”

Nott tried to hiss and struggle, hoping to catch the woman holding her off guard; perhaps if it caused her captor to drop the sword it might make a sound loud enough to alert the others down the hall, or if she stalled long enough they might come looking anyway.

But the woman appeared unfazed by this, for she merely sighed. “I know the likes of you. There is a lot more at stake here than you know. But for my part, all that I care about now is ensuring the safety of those whom I have sworn to protect.”

Nott squirmed a little more, alarmed by the edge of steel in that voice now, the hint of pleasantness quite gone. Fear made her heart beat faster in her chest, her head spinning with it. The hand pressing the mask to her face was making it very difficult for her to breathe, and it was making her desperate. Perhaps that was why she took a chance, to twist her arm free from where it was pulled painfully up behind her back, to claw at the wrist of the woman holding her.

It was a mistake. Even as she felt her claws scratch into flesh, drawing blood where the fine leather glove ended, she heard a sigh of exasperation, saw the flash of metal as the sword came up in a wide arc, hilt first.

She was just conscious of the finely-wrought metal pommel coming up and connecting with the side of her head, before stars exploded briefly before her eyes, and all went dark.


	4. Location, location, location

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (In which our heroes go looking for clues.)

“Wow, _this_ is where you’re staying?” said Jester, standing up on her tiptoes to peer over Cordelia’s shoulder as she took down the silver thread of her alarm spell on the door. When it was done, she stepped inside, hung up her cloak neatly by the door, and ushered them all in behind her. “It’s so beautiful!”

“Yes, well, it was recommended to us by a friend of the family” said Cordelia, rather sourly. “And it was rather nice, right up until the disappearance of our little brother…”

“Oh. Right, yeah. Sorry…”

“What she means to say” said Fjord hastily, “is that this seems like…huh, a really nice place. Not the kind you’d expect something like this to happen.”

“Well, quite” said Astoria. “But there are…reasons that people might target us, specifically…”

“What reasons?” asked Yasha.

“Our family has… a quantity of money” put in Nikolai shortly, before Astoria could answer. Just as he did, Fjord saw Caduceus’ gaze flick to the ground, and followed it in time to see Nikolai stamp on Astoria’s foot.

“We, ah, assumed…” said Fjord.

“Let’s just take a look around” said Caduceus hastily, seeing Cordelia’s narrow-eyed look at Fjord. “We can consider the whys of it later.”

And so, as the servant left them, they trouped inside. Astoria immediately kicked off her boots and flung herself dramatically on a velvet chaise-long near the door to the rest of the suite. Yasha took up a position in the corner, looking uncomfortable. Fjord took the chance to look around, as they were led through to another sitting room; this place was bigger, too, than he had expected. Not to mention even more beautifully – and expensively - furnished than it had looked from the outside, with large windows that could be thrown open to overlook the garden, and a view down the hill over the city. It reminded Fjord a little of the Lavish Chateau in Nicodranas, as much as anything else, which was admittedly as far as his experience with fancy decor went.

Sure enough though, Jester seemed to be in her element, fairly bouncing on the tips of her toes eagerly. As he watched though, she visibly composed herself, taking out the rather superfluous magnifying glass that always hung at her belt when she was on a detective job. “So…is there any evidence that you would like to show me?”

Cordelia shrugged. “This is everything” she said, as Caduceus came in and sat down awkwardly on one of the tiny upholstered pouffes that matched the armchair.

“And nothing was touched or disturbed the night he…disappeared? No money was taken?”

“None at all, as far as we can tell” said Nikolai, furrowing his brow. “We did have some here, and some jewelery and…um, one or two moderately valuable magic items. But none of that was touched.”

“The pyjamas Freddie was wearing were gone, and his slippers. But they didn’t respond to my location spells” said Cordelia. “And none of his other clothes were missing even, let alone any of our things.”

“That makes me think” said Jester, tapping her lip, “that maybe whoever it was didn’t want money.”  
“Well, you don’t say” muttered Nikolai, before Cordelia shot him a withering look.

“I do, yeah” said Jester, placidly. “Now, please may we take a look in the room he was taken from?”

“Yes, through here” said Cordelia, as they followed her into an empty bedroom. There was a chest, a traveling case, various clothes in shades of green and brown strewn around the room, and what looked like a very large pile of cushions and blankets at the foot of the unmade bed, and a bowl next to it with what looked like the remains of a meal of some sort. Caduceus was looking at something on the ground, and Fjord watched him stoop to pick up a long, grey feather, tilting his head and furrowing his brow as he looked closely at it.

“Ah, yes, that’s Pinecone’s. Freddie had to keep her in here because bringing large animals in is…frowned on by the ownership of this place, apparently” sighed Cordelia. “She’s gone too, as we said.”

“How did they manage that?” Jester wondered aloud.

“I would love to know, honestly” said Cordelia. “She’s an almost-fully-grown owlbear, for Pelor’s sake! She loves him, and would kill anyone who tried to harm him. I don’t like any of this…” her voice was growing more and more fretful again, tailing off into nothing when Madeleine laid a hand on her arm.

“We’ll find them both” Jester reassured her, suddenly serious. She put her hands on her hips, looking around and taking out her magnifying glass. “Well” she said. “I guess we’d better do what we came here for.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re going to look for clues. And I’m going to need all of your help.”

“What can we do to help?” asked Astoria.

“If you’re okay with it, we’re going to comb this place from bottom to top. I’ll need lists of everything that was here, everything that might be out of place. I’m going to draw a picture of the crime scene in my book, so I can take it back to show Nott. I’m also going to ask the Traveler what he thinks, and I’m sure he’ll help.” She grinned, taking off her pink haversack, rooting around inside, and pulling out her sketchbook and paints. “Does that sound good?”

The siblings looked at each other. “Well” said Cordelia with a sigh. “I do believe in being meticulous. So I suppose it’s as good a start as any.”

* * *

Despite Jester’s initial enthusiasm, however, several hours passed and it had grown dark, and they had discovered very little of note. By now, Yasha was pacing back and forth in the corridor outside the suite, while Caduceus had taken to looking out the windows over the garden, his staff raised, occasionally turning back and watching everyone carefully. Fjord was sitting cross-legged in front of Madeleine, helping her go through a frankly bewildering array of strange clothes and weapons, while Astoria was crunching nervously on a bag of hard cinnamon candies she had found under one of the beds, apparently only semi-conscious of what she was doing save for the fact that occasionally she passed one to Jester, who was on the floor peering through her magnifying glass at a few owlbear down feathers that had become caught up in the curtain tassels. Cordelia was going through an improbably large stack of papers she had unearthed from one of her improbably small pockets, her lips pursed in concentration. Nikolai had vanished into one of the other rooms to sort through their lockbox a little while ago and hadn’t been seen since.

Finally, Cordelia shut the papers into her spellbook with a snap, making Jester straighten up. “Anyone find anything yet?”

“There were some more feathers” said Jester, aggrieved, as Astoria nodded in agreement, her teeth being stuck together with candy at present. At some point during the last few hours, she had stuck several feathers in Jester’s horns. “But not much else. Sorry.”

“I haven’t found much either” Cordelia said. “All of the spell scrolls and…technical notes I brought with me are still here, and no one has gone through them as far as I can see.” She frowned, as Yasha came back in and leaned against the wall. “I just don’t know what else…”

At that moment, though, there was the slamming open of a door from the other room, making them all start with pent-up anxiety. But it was only Nikolai, eyes wide and bright, standing in the doorway.

“Mother’s necklace!” he shouted.

Cordelia blinked. “What?”

“Mother’s necklace! Raven’s slumber. It’s not there! Everything else is there, but…it’s not. It’s missing.”

Cordelia’s eyes widened. “Are you sure?”

“I don’t see it. I didn’t see it when we looked around earlier. Did you?”

“I didn’t!” said Astoria, bounding over, scattering sweet wrappers behind her. “…Oh! What if Freddie still had it?”

“Exactly what I was thinking!”

“What?” asked Fjord. “What are you talking about?”

“A necklace” said Nikolai, who had dropped down to his knees beside Astoria and was peering under the bed. “Black crystal, pointy, about this big…” he indicated a size of about an inch with his fingers. “Very magical.”

“Oh? What does it do?” asked Jester.

“It… stores people, or things” explained Cordelia, frowning. “Once activated, it draws a willing creature into a small extradimensional space….”

“It’s like a little cat basket. Except it can be used for monsters” said Astoria, at the same time. “Mother lent it to Freddie in case he needed somewhere to put Pinecone on our journey…”

“….And he must have had it with him when he got taken, unless it’s very well hidden. And I don’t mean to brag, but I am good at finding shiny things” said Nikolai, getting up and dusting off his hands on his coat. “So we should assume that wherever he got taken, it went with him. Cordelia, do you have another locate spell in you today?”

“I’m all out” she said, regretfully. “I was trying clothes and things all morning, but nothing was working…” she ground her teeth, frustrated. “Stupid! I should have thought of this…”

“I have locate object!” said Jester. Her face fell. “But it won’t work on something I don’t know…”

“I can do it” said Madeleine.

Astoria shot her a look. “Are you… going to be okay with that?”

Madeleine laid a hand on her sister’s arm. “It’s fine. It’s safe magic …stuff from Pelor, you know” she said, and the two shared a look that Fjord didn’t quite understand.

“Well, okay.” Astoria nodded, leaving her hand on her twin’s arm as Cordelia pulled a forked twig from her component pouch and handed it to Madeleine. There was a moment where everyone was silent, as Madeleine’s eyes closed, the twig glowing slightly between her clasped hands. She squeezed her eyes closed as she turned a little in a circle, holding out the twig in the direction the spell pointed her, until she was facing roughly towards the window.

Finally, her eyes flew open. “It… worked” she breathed, as though she couldn’t quite believe it herself. She rushed to the window, looking out over the city. “I can sense it. Someone get me a map!”

* * *

“I don’t know the city well enough to get the exact street, but it should be somewhere within….this range” said Madeleine, as they all crowded around her at the desk in front of the window. She looked at the darkened, rainy cityscape, then back at the map again. “Between that tower and that… big shiny roof. But it was somewhere near this square…” she blinked down at where she had drawn a circle on the map. “Wait. That’s near…”

“Near the Pentamarket” said Jester. “That’s near home!”

It was true, Fjord saw; the rooms they had hired to set up the detective agency were within the neat circle that Madeleine had drawn in red wax pastel on the map.

He frowned. “Huh.”

“ _Huh_ , indeed” said Nikolai, pacing behind them. He was spinning what looked like a tony crossbow bolt between his fingers. He looked up. “You’re all thinking what I’m thinking…right?”

“If you’re thinking we should go there right now, then yes” said Astoria, hands on her hips, already pulling her boots back on. “You people. Detectives. Come with us and help us batter down their door?”

“Wait. Wait. Wait, wait, wait” said Cordelia, before any of them could answer. “We can’t just charge in, guns – uh, proverbially - blazing - ”

“Why not?”

She blinked, looking torn. “I said I’d keep you all safe!”

“We have them!” said Astoria, gesturing with a thumb towards the four members of the Mighty Nein. “Let’s go, right now! What else are they good for? Uh, no offense.”

“…None taken” said Jester.

She poked Yasha’s arm. “She’s got a big sword. The rest of them have magic. _We_ have magic too!” She grinned. “I thought you wanted to do this?”

“We don’t even know for certain if Freddie’s there” said Cordelia. “And we can’t just go around smashing down people’s doors in this city…”

“He _could_ be there, though” said Astoria. “And isn’t it worth a bit of door smashing to find out?”

“Hey. How about this” said Fjord, before anyone could answer this last. “How about we stop off and get the others first. See if they’ve found anything out.”

“I think that’s a great idea, Fjord” said Jester. She patted Cordelia on the arm. “Caleb’s got a bunch of magic, and Beau can punch secrets out of people. Yeah, I know, it’s pretty great! Molly…is Molly, and can do a shiny thing with his swords, and Nott is my sneaky sneaky co-detective. We’re much better with them.”

“…Wouldn’t that waste a lot of time?” asked Nikolai.

“We don’t know for certain how time-sensitive this is” said Caduceus, placid as ever. “And Jester’s right. We are better when the others are with us.”

“…Much as it pains me to say, I think he’s right, you know.” Madeleine sighed, getting up from the table, rolling up the map, and looking at each of her siblings in turn. “Remember what mother and father always said?”

“They love us?”

“Goes without saying. I’m talking about the more practical advice.”

“Always check for traps?”

“No, other thing.”

Her shoulders dropped. “Not to split up your party and go rushing into things with only half your allies. Yes, this seems like…an opportune moment to remember that, I’ll grant you.”

“Yeah.”

“…The thing is, this might not lead us anywhere, either!” said Cordelia, throwing up her hands anxiously. “But if it does, if there’s even a chance, then I can’t help but feel like we’re just wasting time…”

Fjord sighed. “I don’t know how much time we have. But I do think we should go back to home base. We need the others, especially if there’s gonna be a fight. Which we will try to keep you four out of as much as we possibly can,” he added firmly. He looked around the room; it had grown dark outside now, the rain coming down in sheets. The wide window looked down over the garden, and down the sloping street from the hill on which the Tri-Spires district was built, to take in the network of streets and squares of Zadash, the city lights glimmering against the wet night as the clouds lowered above. “We’re better off all together, I think.” He looked at the four siblings. “What d’y’all say?”

“I say…” said Cordelia, looking at her siblings, one after the other, “let’s do that, then.”

* * *

By the time they made it back, their clothes and boots were all thoroughly drenched, and their resolve was not much better. They left a trail of wet footprints all the way up the stairs as they made their way up the narrow little staircase to the upstairs rooms.

As they came up the stairs, however, the door at the top flew open, to reveal Caleb with his glove of blasting raised high, Molly and Beau at either side of him, Frumpkin weaving around their feet with teeth and claws bared.

“Caleb!” shouted Jester. “It’s just us! What’s wrong?”

Caleb just stood there with gritted teeth, not lowering his hand, until Beau laid her hand on his arm. “It’s them” she said, gently.

Caleb blinked a few times, as behind him, Molly began to sheath the scimitar he had been halfway through drawing.

“Caleb” said Yasha, unexpectedly, from the back of the group. “Something is wrong…”

It was not a question; it was not hard to tell from the guarded posture of the three in the doorway that all of the them were badly shaken.

“What’s happened?” said Jester, biting her lip nervously, as the four siblings exchanged looks behind her. “….And where’s Nott?”

Caleb dropped his hand, and sighed. “Come in” he said, stepping aside to let them past. “We will tell you everything.”

* * *

“…So Nott’s just _gone?_ ” asked Jester, voice hollow with disbelief. Her face was in her hands, as Caduceus pushed a cup of tea towards her across the table. “But we can find her, right?” She drew back, grabbing the tip of her own tail apparently unconsciously, twisting it between her hands. She brightened suddenly. “I can find her, though!”

“Do it” said Caleb, immediately, Frumpkin jumping up onto the table and meowing in agreement. “We need her back.”

* * *

Jester’s eyes opened, as the locate person spell faded. She was grinning, her tail lashing in excitement. “She’s across on the other side of the Pentamarket…” Jester’s pen hovered over the same map that Madeleine had brought with them from the Tri-Spires, dripping a splash of ink as she squinted down at the place. “About here.” She drew a cross on one side of a small courtyard. “Wait…”

At the very same time, Madeleine gasped, as the mark fell within the circle she had drawn earlier. “What if…”

“…That’s where the necklace is, too?”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“What necklace?”

“Our mother’s.”

“Uh…”

Everyone looked at each other, trying to decide where to start, for just a moment. “Well,” Molly said at last, into the silence. “I don’t understand what’s going on, really at all. But I think we can do the explaining on our way there, hmm?”

* * *

Nott woke to the sound of someone speaking in a quiet voice behind her, rattling around her aching skull.

“-All is well with them. And give her my love too, as ever. Goodbye for now, brother.”

There was a little magical click, of the kind that the sending spell made when Jester finished a message. But it wasn’t Jester; that much Nott was sure of. The voice sounded familiar, kind of, but Nott couldn’t quite remember where she had heard it before.

She furrowed her brow, trying to think; it was a mistake, as the motion made her head ache, a throbbing pain radiating outwards from her right temple.

She made to raise her hand to the spot, reflexively, and that was how she found out that her wrists were tied to the arms of the too-large wooden chair, in which she was slumped in a half-sitting position that made her back ache dreadfully.

For a moment, she panicked at the realisation that she was bound in an unfamiliar room; her mask seemed to be gone too, and when she looked down at herself she saw that her crossbow, shortsword and gun had all been taken from her. Her flask too, she noted with displeasure. She craned her neck as far as she could, trying to see who was speaking behind her. She recognised the voice now, her most recent memories coming back with the waves of pain; arms holding her too tight, a hand covering her mouth. The toe of a fine leather boot prodding at her gun, lying on the ground. An impact to the side of her head, its location matching the pain, and then blackness.

She’d been kidnapped then, she thought, letting out a little involuntary whine as she felt a twinge of pain up the side of her neck when she tried to twist around to no avail.

The person behind her seemed to notice the sound, as the next thing Nott heard was the screech of a chair against floorboards, and light footsteps coming towards her.

Nott bared her teeth and hissed, as a human woman crouched down in front of her. Hard, grey-blue eyes narrowed with suspicion and disdain. Nott stared back at her, scrutinising her in the way detectives in the stories did. Gathering evidence, that was the key; she still had a job to do, she thought, trying to force herself not to panic. _Focus_.

Nott thought this woman must be at least ten years older than Caleb, who was her most reliable metric for all things human. But this woman had streaks of white in the front of her brown hair, so on second thought, who knew how much older. Her clothes, though simply cut and in muted shades of blue, looked finely made and expensive. Apart from that, though, Nott could get frustratingly little from her glance over her captor.

The woman frowned at Nott, pulling up another chair and sitting down opposite to the one Nott was tied to. She reached into a small bag at her side, and pulled out two objects; one was the necklace that Nott had stolen from Kara, and the other she recognised as her gun.

“I would like to know” said the woman, in a quiet, measured voice, “the full story behind how you acquired this” she raised the necklace, dangling it in front of Nott’s eyes briefly, “and what you know about the whereabouts of Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo the fourth. Twelve years old, visiting this city with his siblings.” She nodded, seeing Nott’s reaction. “Ah, I thought you might be familiar with that name, yes.”

“What’s it to you?” Nott managed to rasp out. “Who are you?”

“I told you already… I am just a guardian. And I…shall we say, I am personally connected to the family, so I would trust me when I say that I will not be swayed on this. Now tell me what you know.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“Liar.” She held out the necklace. “He had this. You took it from him.”

“No I didn’t! I stole it from some lady in a tavern!”

“ _Liar_. I followed you out of that tavern; I heard enough of you and your accomplices talking to know that you know more than you’re saying.”

“You followed us?” Nott burst out indignantly. “ _I_ didn’t see you! …Why didn’t I see you?”

She smiled wryly. “I know ways to avoid being seen, if I so choose. The life I have lived has…demanded it, at times.” She glared, all pretense of amusement leaving her, as she took out Nott’s gun, dangling it between them with her finger and thumb as though in disgust. “What about this?”

“That’s mine” said Nott. She supposed there was no sense in denying it.

“Do you know how to use it?”

“Yes.”

“Who taught you?”

“No one! I taught myself.”

“It’s got the mark of the Dwendalian crown on it. Where did you get it?”

Nott wondered if she should pretend to have some link to the Empire; depending on where this woman’s loyalties lay, that might make her prospects better, or much worse. Still, it wasn’t very likely that she would believe such a story, all things considered. So once more, Nott opted for the truth. “I stole it too.”

“Of course you did.” She tutted. “Does the name de Rolo mean anything to you?”

Nott frowned at this non-sequitur. “It’s…the name of the missing child.”

“Anything else?”

 _A good detective keeps her clients’ business confidential_ , thought Nott. “No.”

“What about the name Ripley?”

Now Nott didn’t have to fake ignorance. “Nothing.”

“I see.” She set the gun down on the table with a decisive snap, drawing a dagger from her belt with a bright flourish, and pressing it up against Nott’s throat. “Please understand, that I am bound to this matter not only by duty, but by blood ties.” With her other hand she drew out a piece of crumpled paper from her pocket, folded in half. “Now, I have come into possession of something that I would ask you about. And I want you to understand that if you try to lie to me about - ”

She never got to finish her sentence.

For at that moment, on Nott’s left there was a resounding clatter of wood, the sound of door hinges squealing and breaking. She turned to look at the same time as her captor did, darting to her feet and drawing a shortsword along with the dagger and assuming a defensive stance.

Nott followed her gaze, gasping out loud with sheer relief at what she saw.

The door of the room had been torn off its hinges to crash onto the floor, and within the doorway stood Jester, teeth bared, wielding her glowing pink spectral lollipop. Behind her stood Caleb with his hands aflame, Fjord with his falchion drawn and Molly with swords glowing preternaturally blue. Jester shouldered her way into the room and behind her came the others, Yasha with her greatsword gleaming and darkness in her eyes, and Caduceus surrounded by a swarm of beetles, buzzing menacingly as they flew from his staff. Behind them in the corridor, Nott could just see Cordelia, hands up to summon a shield of glowing blue-white energy surrounding the twins. All three were craning to see what was going on in the room. “Give us back our friend or you’ll regret it!”

Nott expected a fight, then; she looked nervously at the woman who had kidnapped her, to see that her eyes had widened and she had frozen. But she didn’t look afraid; instead, she looked incredulous, and more than a little sheepish, Nott thought with confusion.

Belatedly, the shuttered window was smashed open and in lept Beauregard, landing on her feet, and Nikolai a moment later scrambling over the sill. “Hope we didn’t miss too much of the fun…” he smirked, drawing his crossbow and pointing it at the woman before him. He faltered. “Wait…” he said, as she turned and met his eye, apparently caught off his guard. He lowered his crossbow hastily, his eyes going from her to Nott, to Cordelia and the twins who were pushing their way past Jester into the room now. “Uh…Aunt Cass?”

“…Um. Hello, Nikolai.”

“Auntie…” by now Astoria had pushed past her sisters, into the room. “Not that it isn’t nice to see you but… what…are you _doing_ here? Also, could you please let our… friend go?”

She lowered the sword, with a sigh. “I am sorry, this wasn’t supposed to happen. But your parents send their love and good wishes. And I’m… here to help.” She frowned, looking around at Nott, the Mighty Nein, and the four siblings each in turn, then back again. “I’m afraid there has been some confusion here, though. Could someone, please, kindly tell me _what is going on_?”


	5. From Tal'Dorei with love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (In which an impromptu family reunion occurs.)

“I don’t understand why you’re here at all, but I’m very glad to see you!” Astoria said, looking entirely perplexed but unable, apparently, to keep from grinning. “Hello, Auntie!”  She rushed forward to hug the newcomer – who, now that Nott looked again, did bear a striking family resemblance to the four siblings that she probably would have noticed earlier, she thought, had she not had the blade of a sword pressed to her throat and thus been somewhat distracted.

The enthusiasm of the hug, however, had the effect of nearly knocking Cassandra back with the impact and making her hastily raise the sword above both their heads to avoid an unpleasant accident.

(Nott, for her part, used the moment of distraction to sidle well out of reach of the sword, back to Caleb’s side, and very relieved she was too.)

Meanwhile, Cassandra had caught her balance, patting the top of Astoria’s head with her free hand, looking almost as confused as almost everyone else did by this situation. “Hello, dear. Well, this certainly is a development.”

“Look, there’s the necklace!” said Madeleine, coming in after Astoria and picking it up from the table, peering into its black crystal depths. “And there’s Nott! We were right, about them being in the same place. But I didn’t expect…” it was her turn to look perplexed. “Um. Can someone tell me what’s going on?”

“I second that” said Nikolai, shuffling broken glass off his boots and lowering his crossbow. He looked rather put out, and not a little wary. “Are mother and father here too? …Is something wrong back home?”

“No, no, please don’t worry about that - ”

“Wait” said Cordelia, pushing past them into the room in her turn. “I’m…. I’m sorry Aunt Cass, but before we do anything else we….need to check it’s really you.”

Cassandra nodded, approvingly. “Good, that’s always a very sensible idea. Ask me anything you need.” She glanced suspiciously towards the door, to where the Mighty Nein were gathering, all wearing expressions in various degrees on nonplussed. She narrowed her eyes. “Assuming it is safe to speak freely in front of…whoever they are?”

“I should think so, yes.”

“Very well, then. Please feel free to ask something that only your real aunt would know.”

“Tell me…um…” Cordelia looked to her sibings for inspiration. Nikolai shrugged. “When is my birthday?”

“The twenty-seventh day of Duscar, in the silent days between Winter’s Crest and New Dawn.” She gave a little smile that was half a grimace. “…You were born a week earlier than expected. There was a terrible snowstorm, and they had to dig out the teleportation circle from under a six-foot drift so that Pike could get there in time to be at your mother’s side, without emerging entirely underneath the snow. Your father was pacing a hole in the carpet the whole time of course; I thought he was going to invoke the third pact for a moment there.” Cordelia visibly relaxed, looking at her siblings. But Cassandra was not done. “Nikolai.” She turned to him. “Growing up, you always used to follow along behind me, begging me to teach you every secret passage in the castle, and over the years I did; I taught you about every single one I know, which amounts to… quite a few. Your favourite was always the one that led to the cave in the mountains. Also, I remember when you learned to climb roofs. You gave your parents and I no end of worry, but you always liked to go and watch the birds. You gave them each individual names, by which you would refer to them as personal friends.” She turned to the twins, as Nikolai blushed and muttered something. “Madeleine. Your favourite way to spend an afternoon is sparring in the courtyard, or working at the bakery; depends on the day. You once invented a new type of cream pastry, but declared that it can only be eaten on Winter’s Crest night, as well as your birthday. Astoria… if I recall correctly, when you were six years old you had an argument with your twin over a toy bear, and you took a fancy to run away from home to become a pirate. You actually got as far as the town gates before wandering back because you ate all the provisions you had brought with you, which amounted to three cinnamon cakes, a couple of chocolate caramels, and a flask of apple juice.”

“It was a toy rabbit” muttered Astoria, under her breath. “Not a bear. But go on.”

“I stand corrected, my dear” she said, with a slight smile. Her face grew grave again though, as she looked at them all in turn. “Now, I would hope that that is enough to prove that I am who I say I am. All of you, along with your littlest brother, are my beloved nieces and nephews, and you had best believe that I would lay down my life for any of you. But, with that in mind…” her gaze turned thunderous. “Please, would one of you kindly explain this…” she gestured around the room, “ _situation_ you seem to have immediately gotten yourselves into once you arrived in this city? And why, pray do tell, is Freddie missing? And were you planning on informing anyone who might be able to actually help of that fact, at all?”

Silence followed her words.

“Uh, should we give you guys some space?” asked Nott, awkwardly edging to the door.

But Cassandra glared at her, pointing with her sword. “Oh, no, please do stay. I promise, I am _far_ from finished with you.”

“Auntie, they’re our friends” said Astoria. “They actually came here to help us find Freddie.”

“It’s…more complicated than that” said Cordelia, looking rather apologetically at Jester and Nott, and then glaring at her sister. “But it’s true, they are…professionally connected to this matter.”

“We’re detectives!” piped up Jester, as Nott popped her head out from where she had been slowly edging away past the table, nodding so enthusiastically that her ears flapped.

“I…see.” Cassandra narrowed her eyes. “Children, may I…have a word in private, please?”

“Of course” said Cordelia. She looked up at the Mighty Nein, who were now all standing around rather awkwardly. Beau shuffled a few pieces of glass from the shattered window under the table with the toe of her shoe. “Um, could you please all give us a moment?” she asked.

Once the eight of them had trouped out of the room, Cordelia drew in her siblings close, looking up at her aunt. “I assume it’s them you want to talk about?” she said, looking at the closed door.

“Yes” said Cassandra, with a frown. “Dear, I do not know what possessed you to…involve them in this, but are you _sure_ they are trustworthy?” She raised the sword, inspecting the hilt. “Because, if not, then their knowledge of and involvement in this is by no means an irreversible development…”

“Auntie!” gasped Astoria. “Are you suggesting…”

“I’m not suggesting anything” said Cassandra. “And I know that I am perhaps somewhat over-cautious, but you have to understand, that is why I am here. And I’ve found on multiple occasions in my life that an abundance of caution has served me better than the alternative.” Seeing Astoria’s look, she took her hand away from the sword, with a sigh. “All right. All right, let’s start with this. Who are they? And how did you get to know them?”

“We… hired them” said Cordelia reluctantly, when none of the others answered immediately. “It was…my idea: they really are detectives, though. Or at least, the goblin and the blue tiefling are. The others are…their friends? Assistants? Adventuring companions? It’s…somewhat unclear.”

“They had a poster tacked to a pillar in the Pentamarket” said Nikolai. “I was all for, uh, calling on more trustworthy help, but I was…outvoted.”

Cordelia glared at him. “Oh, excuse me, I forgot that you were the model of caution and responsibility” she said sourly.

“Just _what_ is that supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly.”

“…Fair. But, never fucking mind that now!” snapped Nikolai, suppressed anger beneath his voice rising to the surface. “Because, as long as we’re airing our grievances…” He turned to Cassandra, hurt behind his eyes. “I can’t believe that mother and father would send you to spy on us, but, ah, I’m having trouble believing anything else right now.”

She sighed. “Nikolai, your parents - ”

“We were supposed to be allowed to travel on our own!” he said, voice cutting, resentful. “They said they trusted us!”

“Nikolai, please. If you let me explain - ”

“We’re not babies anymore! I know you were always…tolerant of me, Auntie, and I’ve done some stupid things over the years, but I thought that this…” he gestured around, as though taking in the whole city, the whole country even, “meant that I’d earned their trust. But I guess even now you all think - ”

“ _Nikolai_.” Cassandra’s voice was steel suddenly, and he instantly went quiet. “Please, I know you are angry. But proper conversation thrives on courtesy, so if you will kindly let me explain…”

Nikolai sighed, as the tense silence descended once more. “All right. I am sorry, Auntie. Please do explain.” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m all ears.”

* * *

**_[Some time earlier, on the road to Whitestone]_ **

“They’re going to have such fun across the sea” said Percy.

Vex nodded. “They’re going to make so many friends.”

“As parents, we need to let them go out in the world alone at some point.”

“I wholeheartedly agree.”

“I trust our children.”

“As do I. There’s no reason anything should go wrong!”

“Scarcely any cause to entertain the possibility!”

Silence for a while, save for the clicking of their horses’ hooves on the stone paving slabs as they made their way from the docks along the road back to Whitestone proper.

“I _do_ trust them” Vex insisted, breaking the thoughtful silence. “You _know_ I do, darling.”

“Of course. I do, too.”

“But the thing is…”

Percy turned to her, raising a sympathetic eyebrow as he waited for her to finish the thought.

“The thing _is_ ,” said Vex, gesturing distractedly with her rein in hand, “if I trust the people I love to do one thing, it’s to fuck up and get themselves into absurd amounts of trouble.”

“…I have to agree with you there” said Percy, with a sigh, riding a little closer beside her. They were silent for a moment, contemplating this. “It would be wrong, wouldn’t it” he said after a moment, “to… just, perhaps, check they are doing all right occasionally.”

“We explicitly said we would not” Vex agreed. “So if we did, it would be…extremely morally questionable. Especially since we trust them.”

“We do” agreed Percy. “Implicitly.”

They were both silent, for a short moment longer. “Oh sweet Pelor, they are going to get in so much trouble even before they get to Deastok.”

“ _So_ much.”

They looked at each other with narrowed eyes. “We made a deal that Cordelia would update us with the sending stone once a week…” said Vex.

“…And in return we wouldn’t check up on them the rest of the time…”

They thought about it for a little while longer. “…Someone else could, though.”

“Someone who is adept at going unseen, quiet and discreet.”

“Someone who could keep track of them from a distance.”

“Someone who has done so much for us and Whitestone over the years, she really is due for a holiday soon anyway.”

Finally Vex said, “darling, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“If it involves my sister and is pedantic to the point of being slightly morally questionable, then, probably, yes, my dear.”

“I wouldn’t even say morally questionable” said Vex, with a shrug. “That time you scryed on Scanlan; _that_ was morally questionable, but probably justified. This is more…” she waved her hand in the air. “Morally capable of raising eyebrows.”

Percy nodded. “I always enjoy your reasoning so much, dear.”

 

Cassandra was watering the potted plants that lined the windowsill of her study – gifts from Freddie, who seemed to fill the castle with them and give them to all of his family, somehow or other – when there came a knock at the door.

“Come in?”

As soon as she said it, the door opened and there was her brother, with that smile on his face that was the one that indicated he wanted to ask her a favour. Though this smile was a little more trepidatious than most, she thought. Maybe it was something big, then. She raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Cass. My darling sister, whom I love” said Percy, and she braced for being asked something majorly inconvenient or unpleasant. “You know how all those years ago, we agreed that you should take a holiday away from here, every so often? And that you weren’t to think of doing anything even remotely related to family business.”

“Yes…”

“Well” said Percy, fidgeting with his cuff, “I would like to ask if you’d be amenable to taking your trip a little early. And, ah, maybe to bend that last rule, just a little bit…”

Cassandra sighed, as she realised where this was going. “Percy, do you want me to go to Wildemount and keep an eye on your children?”

He looked both relieved and flustered. “Not…necessarily to keep an _eye_ on them. Think of it as a holiday…but also, don’t _not_ keep an eye on them. Or an ear out for them. Or, you know. Both.”

She was silent for a moment. “All right” she said, pouring the last of the water into the gardenia’s pot and setting the jar aside.

He looked a little taken aback by her sudden agreement. “You’ll do it?”

“Well, I suppose someone has to, and given that you presumably promised that you wouldn’t…”

He came into the room and enveloped her in a hug. “What would Vex and I do without you.”

She wrinkled her nose, hiding her smile. “You smell of horse. Also, you would be worse off, of course.”

“…Sorry. And, yes, true.”

She sighed. “Well, I suppose I had better get ready to leave then, if I’m not to be too far behind.”

* * *

**_[Present]_ **

“So, in summary” said Nikolai, twirling a crossbow bolt between his fingers as he paced the room. Astoria came back into the room, bringing the Mighty Nein back in behind her. “They did, actually and genuinely, send you to spy on us.”

“Well” said Cassandra, tilting her head. “In a manner of speaking. But you have to understand, it was meant with all love. …And you know that our family has…perhaps a little more reason to be wary than most. Historically speaking.”

“…Hmm.” He frowned, still unsatisfied. “It’s the principle, though…”

“I mean, I do at least partially agree with you” broke in Cordelia. “But, before we have this conversation, should we not concentrate on the more pressing problem? Of finding our brother?”

Nikolai narrowed his eyes, turning to his aunt. “Are you going to tell mother and father about this?”

She frowned. “…I see no reason to worry them, at this point in proceedings.”

He blinked. “…Oh. Wait, really?”

“Gods know, your mother and father have had their share of worry and heartbreak. They deserve a break. So no, I was not planning on telling them until we knew more, or until I had resolved this myself, which, not to bring a curse to the whole operation, is, I think, an achievable goal given what we know.”

“…It is?”

She smiled, taking in the thirteen pairs of eyes watching her carefully. “I think it is, yes.” She looked back to the four siblings. “You wanted trust. Well, _h_ _ere’s_ the part where I trust you…or at least trust your judgement in whom _you_ place your trust in. Because we have an important resource that we didn’t before. And I think they will be very useful to us in what I have planned. Because make no mistake, I do have a plan to get my youngest nephew back. And now, I’m certain we have the means to do it.”

Astoria frowned. “What do you mean? Sorry Auntie, but how can you have a plan? You don’t even know what happened?” She thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, how did you even know that Freddie wasn’t with us? Have you been spying on us that closely?”

“I promise you, dear, I have not” she said. “But that is a very good question, because there’s something I haven’t told you yet, about all of this. In fact, it’s why I set up this safe house in Zadash, though I never meant to follow you so closely.”

“What? What is it?”

“Immediately after I disembarked from the ship, I hired a horse and began down the road to Zadash after you. Along the way, I stopped at a staging post, and who should I meet but a man travelling in the opposite direction, asking for about the next ship across the sea to Tal’Dorei.” She grimaced. “Specifically, to Whitestone.” She pulled out a folded piece of paper, holding it before her. “Now, once again you may call me overcautious – others have – but as I said, that has saved my life, and your father’s, more than once over the years. And so I began to ask this man more. And as I did, it became rather clear to me that his intentions for travelling to Whitestone were…less than honourable. He was, you see, carrying this.”

Cordelia sucked in a breath, taking the piece of paper that Cassandra was holding out to her, and began to read.

 

“ _Most esteemed Lord de Rolo of Whitestone~_

_We have your youngest son in our possession. He is safe and well cared for, however, if you ever want to see him again, you will be compliant with our very fair requests, which are as follows:_

_1) Surrender of complete plans for the building of both long and short range firearms,as well as any supplementary notes on best practice in their engineering._

_2) Notes on and suggested improvements to the models of weaponry issued by the Dwendalian crown._

_3) The establishment of a supply chain for firearms, black powder, and ammunition by ship across the Shearing Channel, to be set up by a contact in Port Damali._

_4) Cessation of diplomatic relations with the Dwendalian crown, on a timescale at your discretion so as not to arouse undue suspicion._

_5) Full compliance with the requests of the Myriad in any future endeavours._

_On these conditions, your son will be returned to you safe and well. If not, the child may still be returned to you, but perhaps less safe and well. We enclose a token of good faith; let it also serve as proof that what we say is true._

_We await your answer, by way of the messenger by which this proposal was delivered. Please do note, if our representative comes to harm on the outward or return journey, or if word does not reach us by Barren Eve, then this will be taken account of and your son will face the consequences._

_We await your reply by sealed mail carried by our own messenger, and look forward to many years of fruitful partnership ahead._

_Kindest Regards,_

_A_ _R_ _epresentative of the Myriad_ _of_ _Zadash._ ”

 

Silence fell after she finished reading the note, as from the envelope, Cordelia slowly pulled something else; a few locks of dark hair almost exactly the same colour as her own, tied off with a piece of red ribbon. She held it out for a moment, as the import of the words set in.

“Aunt Cass, how...how did you get this?” asked Nikolai. “Surely he wouldn’t give this message up freely.”

Cassandra sighed, sheathing her sword. “No, I daresay he did not. I tried to be diplomatic with him but unfortunately it got...somewhat regrettably, messier than I was intending.” She saw his expression. “Thus, my urgency in getting to Zadash to warn you.”

“...Oh.” said Nikolai, in a small voice.

“The Myriad…” breathed Astoria. “Remember when mother and father went to Wildemount, with uncle Tary? The first time? Wasn’t that…” she tailed off.

Cordelia’s hands were worrying at the binding of her spellbook, fretful. “That’s what I was afraid of…”

“I think…” said Fjord, after a moment, making Cordelia jump slightly, “that with all due respect, there’s more goin’ on here in this case than you originally mentioned.”

The words fell into silence, once more.

“Barren Eve…” said Caleb, breaking the hush. His voice cracked a little, tight with the suppressed dread that they all felt. “That is only two days away…”

Astoria’s eyes widened in horror, as she realised. “The messenger never made it!” She looked from her aunt to her siblings, to the Mighty Nein, and back again. “That means…that means that whatever father would have said, they’re still going to hurt Freddie…”

“Oh, don’t worry about that!” piped up Jester, unexpectedly. “If you tell me what your dad is like, I can fake a letter from him, easy.” She smiled, in response to the sceptically raised eyebrows she was met with. “I’m super good at forgery” she said, by way of explanation.

“She really is” said Nott, loyally.

“I see” said Cassandra again, clearly only partially convinced. She began to pace, her hand on her chin. “Well, I can’t think of a better short term solution anyway, so we may as well try it. Though it does carry the risk that we will lose the greatest piece we have in this game: the fact that they will - ”

But then, her words were interrupted. For at that moment, there was a flash of magic from over in the corner where Madeleine had been standing, quiet all this time, and the sound of her letting out a yelp of alarm, dropping a small object to the floor with a clatter. Immediately, hands went to weapons or began to make spellcasting gestures all around the room. But before anyone had time to act, the magical light brightened, shining out of something on the floor at Madeleine’s feet. It began to shape itself into something, large and outlined in light and gaining form, and then -

And then, a huge, hulking owlbear stood in the middle of the room, claws raking into the floorboards as it let out a panicked roar, raising its head, and rushing forward into Madeleine, knocking her backwards onto the floor with a crash. Several of the Mighty Nein were looking extremely alarmed, and Caleb was already raising his hand to cast a spell, but before he could hurl the fire that was forming at his fingertips, Cordelia flung out a shimmering silver-blue shield between them, surrounding her sister and the beast above her.

“No!” she shouted, turning to Madeleine, a grin slowly forming across her face. “It’s alright! It’s just Pinecone!”

Sure enough, the initial roar of panic had subsided to a joyous squawking, as Pinecone nuzzled her feathered face joyfully into Madeleine’s shoulder, knocking her flat on the floor all over again. Madeleine was giggling, with nervous joy, reaching up to pet Pinecone’s head, cooing softly.

“Ah…” said Molly, looking extremely wary still. “Did I miss something? What just happened?”

“The necklace! I told you, it can hold a creature, but… I was just trying to attune to the necklace, just out of curiosity” she said wonderingly, by way of explanation. “I didn’t expect…”

“I do not think any of us did” said Caleb, stepping back, equally disturbed by this new development.

But Cordelia’s eyes had lit up. “This” she said, “this, gives me hope. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“…Should I?”

“Yes” said Nikolai, clapping Madeleine on the shoulder. “Pinecone must have been there when Freddie disappeared! She’s got to know something…” his face fell, and he smacked himself in the forehead in frustration. “Oh. But wait, Freddie is the only one that can talk to her…”

But he tailed off, as Caduceus stepped forward from the door. “Now, that’s not quite as true as you think, if you’ll let me try…?”

* * *

Not far away, in the cellar of a slightly shabby but otherwise nondescript house, the youngest member of the de Rolo family woke up in an unfamiliar room with windows covered over with sackcloth, with a pain in his head and a slight ringing in his ears.

Freddie tried to sit up on the straw matting on which he had been lying, and went to rub his eyes, and that was how he realised his hands were bound.

He frowned; he could not, in that moment, think why that should be the case, yet there were the thick, rough ropes to prove it. He didn’t feel pain anywhere apart from a vague ache in his head and the rubbing of the cords against his wrists, so he didn’t think he had been seriously hurt. But on the other hand, he couldn’t move.

That was a problem. He felt the familiar slight rise of panic in his chest, and so he closed his eyes. There was a way he had, of dealing with this; he’d been practicing it since he was small, usually with his mother there to help, sometimes with his aunt Keyleth, who had told him a secret, that she often felt just the same way as he did. That had helped; to know that even though she was tall and powerful and could turn into a dragon or a big monster made of rock, she still got the blurring in her eyes and ears, and the fast breathing, just like he did. He closed his eyes, and imagined himself to be sitting in the crawlspace underneath the Sun Tree, dug deep into the earth. When he needed it to be extra nice, he always thought about his mother there beside him, his head leaning against her shoulder and her hair tickling his face. Today, he imagined Trinket and Pinecone there too for good measure, even though that wasn’t realistic; the space wasn’t big enough, in real life. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

It must have worked, because soon, Freddie felt his breathing steady. There, in that space – _here_ , now – nothing could harm him. He let himself stay there for a few minutes, before opening his eyes reluctantly.

When he opened his eyes, he was back in the room all on his own with the scratchy ropes around his wrists and the pain in his head. But at least now, he had a little more clarity, and was able to focus enough to take a closer look at his surroundings.

On closer inspection, there was something else tied around one of his wrists; an amber-coloured, roughly almond-shaped stone of some sort, etched with arcane runes he didn’t understand, and tied very tight around his wrist with a leather cord.

All of this, he thought, was probably grounds for being afraid. But surprisingly, he didn’t feel afraid right now; not anymore, anyway, and not for himself.

He did wonder where Pinecone was; he hoped she was safe. Instinctively, he raised his bound hands to his neck, clumsily touching the place where his mother’s necklace had been, to find it gone.

And Pinecone, presumably, with it. Now, _that_ was more worrying. He tried to think about what had happened immediately before. His siblings had gone down to the fanciest place they could find in the Tri-spires that evening – Cordelia and Nikolai would _not_ be buying the twins alcohol, both he, and their parents by Sending Stone, had been assured – and he had been left behind. Not that he minded that part much; Freddie, as a rule, preferred the quiet in his own head and in the forests to crowded places, preferred the company of Pinecone and his books and the birds.

Still though. He felt, in that particular instance, as though he had earned the right to a little mild exploration of this place, given that he had been left unsupervised in their suite. He wasn’t planning on going far, for that matter; only to wander the corridors, listening and watching and mapping out the place in his mind, the way he liked to do. Perhaps, he had thought, he might practice the beast-shaping that Aunt Keyleth had taught him just this year and talk to some mice; he had wondered vaguely if Wildemount mice had different accents from the ones in Whitestone.

He remembered he had been walking in the corridor, when he had heard someone around the corner. His first nervous thought was that it was a servant who would get him in trouble with the management of this place – and perhaps have the five of them kicked out entirely – for having Pinecone with him. Not that he agreed with that on principle; Pinecone was still not fully grown, and very well-behaved too. But he had promised Cordelia, and he was already breaking several rules by going sneaking around late at night.

 _There had been_ _the sound of footsteps_ _, a shadow around the corner,_ _and then_ -

But before Freddie could think any further, he was jolted back to the present by another sound, this time from below. There was a creaking of wood, as what sounded like several people entered what surely must be the room below this one. Then muffled voices.

Freddie frowned. The floor must be thin, since he could hear them speaking, but he couldn’t quite make out the words, bound up in the corner as he was.

Well, he thought, there was an easy solution to that. Whoever it was, he reasoned, probably wouldn’t know about his beast-shaping, given that he had only just learned it. That would allow him to get out of these annoying ropes, and then from there he could always turn back into a twelve-year-old quarter-elf boy and just be stealthy, like his mother had taught him on all those afternoons out tracking in the Parchwood. He was good at going unnoticed; his mother had said so herself, and coming from her that meant a lot.

Besides, Freddie found himself extremely curious about the voices talking downstairs, and what they were planning on doing with him. And so, without further ado, he concentrated on the mouse form, just as he had practiced. A moment later, he felt the rather odd – but not unpleasant – sensation of his form changing, and after a moment more, he was a mouse, the bonds pooling loose and empty on the matting behind him.

(The amulet thing on his wrist, he noticed, had been absorbed by the form, along with his clothes. But that was okay; perhaps he could still learn something about what it was and how to get rid of it.)

And so, without wasting a moment more, he slipped down to the skirting board, and out through a minute crack in the wall to begin to investigate.


	6. Don't shoot the messenger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (In which we obtain inside information.)

“How much longer is this…expected to take?” asked Cassandra, her face a mixture of impatience and deep skepticism.

Beau gave her a rather apologetic look. “…Uh, I dunno.” She gestured at Caduceus, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Pinecone, muttering something in a low voice as the owlbear made soft, distressed-sounding noises back at him. “He does this shit sometimes. Best leave him to it.”

“…Do you know what he’s saying?”

“Nope. I’m sure it’s…something though?”

“Well, perhaps this isn’t the most effective use of - ”

But she got no further, for at that moment, Caduceus patted Pinecone gently on the side of the head, rooting in his bag and pulling out – improbably – a handful of fresh plums, which he proceeded to feed to the owlbear.

“Well?” Cassandra all but snapped, trying valiantly to keep the sarcasm from her voice, “what…does Pinecone have to say?”

“She’s very worried about her boy” said Caduceus solemnly, a small frown line appearing on his face. “She says the last thing that happened was that she and Freddie were going out exploring, in the corridor where you were staying. She says he asked her not to tell anyone, because it was a secret, but she thinks it’s okay because she’s worried he might be in danger.” He looked down at Pinecone for confirmation and she whined in her throat, nudging her head against his arm as though in confirmation of this, as everyone looked on in, variously, utter confusion and mounting concern.

“What happened then?”

He frowned, stroking the top of Pinecone’s head gently, as she made sounds of distress.

“Then…it’s less clear” he said. “She said she heard someone coming in the hall. Her boy got nervous about being caught, and he…” Caduceus snapped his fingers. “Put her in the necklace. And the next thing she knows, she’s being let out here.” He ran his fingers soothingly through the feathers on Pinecone’s head, offering her another plum, which she ate with an only-slightly-appeased whining noise.

“Shh, shh darling” said Astoria, stepping forward and giving Pinecone a hug, and a kiss on the beak. “We’re scared too. But we’ll get him back. Promise.”

“You did great” said Caduceus, joining her in reassuring Pinecone. “That’s important information. It’ll help us help him.”

“Will it?” put in Cordelia. She had been toying with the ribbon pagemarker of her spellbook; over the time that Caduceus had been conversing with Pinecone she had pulled on so many loose threads that it had completely frayed at the end. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we got Pinecone back, but what does this _tell_ us that we didn’t already know?!”

And then, to all their surprise, Beau stepped forward. “…It tells us who did it” she said. “And it tells us where the kid is. Um. I think.”

For a moment, there was silence, as they all stared at her. “It does?” asked Nott, as Cassandra raised an extremely skeptical eyebrow, and the rest looked blank.

“Uh.” Beau looked around at all the faces staring at her in every possible degree of hope, skepticism, and confusion. “Like. I don’t know what you Tal’dorei folks know about how shit goes down in this city…”

“Not much” admitted Cordelia.

At the same time, Cassandra grimaced and said, “already much more than I would choose to.”

Beau sighed. “Well” she said, looking around at the rest of the Mighty Nein, “um. We’ve had some…dealings, I guess, with the…less legal side of Zadash.”

“Detective stuff” said Nott. “Gotta know the underworld if you want to find things!”

“It really helps!” chimed in Jester.

“Uh, yeah” said Beau. “But, uh, just yesterday, I had an, uh, encounter - ”

“You had _sex_?” Jester put in, delighted, “…while investigating a _case_? Oooh, Beau, it’s just like in _Betrayal Comes Dressed in Silk_ …”

“ _Jester!_ There are _children_ here!” chided Nott, just as Nikolai exclaimed “you’ve read that one too?!”

“No!” snapped Beau. “Um, no. No, what happened was….” she sighed, looking around at everyone’s eyes on her. “Okay, so I was with Nott when she stole that thing. And I was talking to the woman that she stole it from, right before.”

Fjord frowned. “Kara? About what?”

“Okay, bear with me here, this might sound like bullshit at first – yeah, no, don’t even bother, Molly – but bear with me. Um, no pun intended. Shut up. I swear this is something.” Beau sighed. “Okay…so, long shot maybe, but have any of you guys ever heard the story of the Terrible Tinkerer of Tal’dorei?”

* * *

 

Freddie peered up through the crack in the floorboards. From here, with the limited vision of a mouse, he could see mostly feet; several pairs, wearing boots, owned by people who were apparently sitting at the table and drinking. He could hear their voices – loud and booming far overhead. They were having a conversation – or rather, by the tone of it, an argument.

“But that’s not the _problem_ ” a voice that sounded male was insisting. “It’s not that he didn’t answer. More like the spell didn’t go through in the first place.”

“You assured me when we started out that this man was trustworthy, and nothing would go wrong,” snapped a female voice. “You gave me your guarantee that he would carry the letter to Whitestone with no…complications.” She tutted. “If you’re fucking with me…”

“No! Not at all. Promise you. I thought…” the man swallowed nervously, thinking, or perhaps playing for time, Freddie thought. Nikolai sounded like that when father caught him trying to pick the lock on his special dangerous cabinet, and Nikolai was trying to think up an excuse on the spot. This man was worse than his brother at it, Freddie thought. “Uh, thing is, I _know_ that spell. I swear, it should work. It normally does! I don’t know why the message doesn’t go through. Except if he was shielding himself magically somehow…”

The woman made a dismissive sound. “Unlikely. That man’s just a messenger.” Freddie heard a _snick_ of metal, as though of a knife being flicked open. “And besides, he and I had… a _talk_ about loyalty, before I sent him off with this particular message. He knows not to fuck us, well enough.”

“Well then, I don’t know!” said the man, a little heated. “Only other possibility is… maybe if the bastard’s somehow got onto another plane of existence…? Okay, no, don’t look at me like that, I’m spitballing here! Or I mean, I guess it wouldn’t work if he was dead, but -”

“Wait. Say that again.”

“What? The sending spell wouldn’t work if he was dead?”

Freddie heard the smack of a palm on the table. “Dead. That must be it.”

“…Huh? What, he just upped and died?” the man snorted. “Don’t think so. Joseth’s pretty tough, I bet he could take a few bandits on the road, or whatever else…”

“I don’t think it was bandits” said the woman, he voice dropping low, thoughtful. She slammed her glass down against the table. “Some fucker’s onto us… and I think I know just who.”

“Huh?”

“You know how I said some little sneak stole that pretty necklace we got, back downstairs?”

“…Yeah? But what does that have to do with Joseth, and the letter? …And, uh, do you really think he’s dead? Fucker owed me twenty-six gold!”

“ _Fuck_ your gold. He’s dead for sure. But that doesn’t matter, now.” He heard paper crumpling, as though crushed in a fist, “But to answer your question, it’s just a hunch. But you know how we agreed that I’d drop some hints with the Mighty Nein, test the waters to see if they would want in on this?”

“Sure. I thought you said it didn’t work?”

“Well, it didn’t. I could tell just from Beau’s reactions that she thinks herself too upstanding for this shit, and if she’s out then her other high-and-mighty friends are _way_ out.” Freddie heard her scoff. “People get so _weird_ about morality and shit when child kidnapping is involved. So I just turned it into some gentle flirting and I thought she was none the wiser. But that’s not the point… I thought I was the one playing her, but as much as it pains me to admit it, I think I was played myself.”

The man laughed. “You, Kara? Surely it can’t be.”

“Fuck you. What I mean though, is that while Beau was talking to me, that creepy little goblin picked my pocket and gotten that necklace that I took off the kid. Seems pretty conveniently timed, doesn’t it?”

“You think Beau was a distraction?”

“It occurred to me at the time, but I dismissed it. Those fuckers aren’t smooth enough to pull that on me, I thought. But now, with Joseth dead and the letter who knows where, then there must be someone else who knows about this. Who must have brought in the Mighty Nein. We know the de Rolo family has allies in the country, people the rest of those rich brats could have run crying to…”

“…And those people could have hired the Mighty Nein?”

“That’s my thinking, yeah.”

“…Damn we really should have killed those other kids.”

Another tut. “There’s so many should haves that we could get into here, but let’s not. Besides, it would have been…messy, and difficult to pull off. We’ve got to work with what we’ve got.”

“…Which is precious little right now, especially if the letter’s gone with Joseth. We’ll have to send someone else.”

“Which we can do. But perhaps we ought to root out the people who would stop us, first.”

“Right. …Might be hard though… if it really is the Mighty Nein, they can be tricky.”

“Ha! Don’t I know it.”

The man dropped his voice. “…What about getting the Gentleman involved? You’re his loyal eyes and ears, right? He owes you.”

“…No. He doesn’t need to know everything…if he does - and if he finds out we’re doing it with his resources and secret channels to boot - he’ll want a cut. Also, possibly, both of our heads for doing our own shit on the side, especially if it’s something with so much potential.”

“And for putting his whole thing in danger if we fuck up.”

“Yes, exactly” Kara snapped. “No, the Gentleman doesn’t need to know. We show him the final results, or else we - ”

But at that moment, Freddie felt his mouse form begin to slip away, realising with horror in the exact same moment that he had been so engrossed in the conversation that he had barely noticed the time passing. He could already feel himself shifting back, growing and changing, bones shifting under his flesh in the narrow space. He felt a jolt of fear; the space under the floorboards was much too small for a quarter-elf, and he could already feel his spine pressing against the underside of the boards. Frantically, he began to cast the wild shape again, to shift back to his mouse form, but in his panic it seemed harder than it usually was, to slip into that shape-shifting state of mind that he had practiced in the sunlit Parchwood with Aunt Keyleth.

In that moment of doubt, Freddie almost lost his grip on the spell; his back was pressed painfully and hard against the floorboards making them creak, a squeaking gasp of pain that was still partly mouse, partly scared quarter elf, escaping involuntarily from his mouth. But a moment later, it passed, and he was recasting the spell and shifting back into a mouse again, tail wrapped around him, shivering and frozen with panic in the gap beneath the floorboards.

To make matters worse, above him he heard a voice that made his breath stop for a moment in his throat, his tiny mouse heart beating at double speed.

“…Did you hear that?”

“…It sounded like it was coming from under the floor.”

“Huh” said Kara, pausing to listen intently for a moment. Time seemed to stretch on and on in the silence, and Freddie could almost hear the shivering of his tiny body, trembling against the wood under the floor, too loud in his sensitive ears. A moment later, the silence was broken, as footsteps rang loud on the floorboards above, pausing just above where he was. He could see a shadow fall across the strips of light coming through the cracks. He tried to think, to run, but in that moment he was simply frozen with fear, his head filled with the buzzing roar of panic that blurred out his thoughts into an angry cloud sometimes, impossible to think his way through. Usually, he would run to his mother or father or one of his siblings or Aunt Cass, or Aunt Keyleth if she was there in Whitestone, or use the breathing exercises she had taught him if she wasn’t.

He tried to do them now, but it was hard, as a mouse. _In, out. In, out_. It kept getting muddled in his head, the breaths he needed to take in this form too quick for the timing that he remembered.

“I think it was nothing” said the man’s voice, breaking through the roaring in his ears.

“Perhaps” said Kara. She didn’t sound convinced. “Perhaps it could be something, though. We’re above the Nip, after all; I’ll go check what’s going on down there. You check on the kid.”

“Of course. Check if anyone’s got any news on the Nein, while you’re there?”

“You practically read my mind.”

And with that, the footsteps started to move towards the door of the room.

He should run, came the thought, cutting through the haze as he heard the creak of steps ascending the stairs. He should run out of here, and never come back. Out of the city, slip onto a ship in this form and sail back across the sea, back home to Whitestone.

But, a little voice in his head said, he didn’t know the city; not much of it, not more than the Tri-spires and glimpses of the streets they had passed through on their way through the city gate. He would be just a little mouse, all alone in a frightening world. And soon enough the mouse form would wear off again, and he would just be a little boy all alone, and that somehow seemed even worse.

Here at least, within the confined walls of this house, he was safe. Freddie hadn’t understood much of what he had overheard, but he had understood enough to know that they probably weren’t planning on killing him. In fact, if he stayed tied up in his room and pretended to still be asleep, then they would probably just leave him alone until he could figure out how to contact Cordelia’s stone, or get a message to someone else who could help. Probably. Perhaps.

 _If_ he had stayed in his room, he thought. But at this very moment, the man was walking up the stairs to check on him, and currently Freddie was down here, very much a mouse under the floorboards, a whole floor below.

He could still make it though, he thought in a flash, fear momentarily clearing as the way became clear before him.

And with only a split second’s hesitation, he was darting back the way he had come, skirting the walls, hiding in the shadows as he streaked across the boards on tiny mouse paws.

The stairs were difficult; he passed the man as he went, feeling a thrill of fear as the heavyset, bearded human cursed the mice in this place, lunging at him with a rolled-up sheaf of paper. But he missed by a foot, and Freddie was able to slip past and back under the skirting board at the top of the stairs, darting around the passageway to emerge back in the room where he had been kept before.

Sure enough, there were the sackcloth-covered windows, the pile of scratchy, hairy ropes that he had slipped from when he had become a mouse, discarded in the corner. He darted back to them, already halfway to letting himself revert back to his ordinary form. As he did so, his paws expanding into his own arms again, he shoved his arms clumsily back through the loops, trying to rearrange them so they would look as neat and undisturbed as possible.

When he was back to himself, he lay down on his back, and closed his eyes.

Not a moment later, there was the sound of a key in the lock, and he heard footsteps. Then a relieved huff of air. “Huh. Guess you’re fine just trussed up here for a bit longer after all” the man said. Freddie resisted the urge to open his eyes as crack, trying to keep his breathing as even as possible as he heard the footsteps move towards him. It took almost all the restraint he was capable of not to flinch when a heavy hand came down on his shoulder – as though to check he was real – giving it a hearty pat. “Want my advice, kid? Don’t be in any hurry to wake up from that sleeping shit Kara gave you. This’ll all just go worse for you if you make a fuss. But I promise, we do want to get you home. One way or another.”

And then, with another laugh, he was turning on his heal, walking out of the room and locking the door again behind him.

Freddie waited a long, long time before he moved again, opening his eyes and letting out his breath in a long, long, relieved sigh. But a moment later, he felt – improbably – a smile curling across his face.

Because a plan was growing in his mind, or at least, the beginnings of one. 

And that, he thought, was something.


End file.
